However, before you can come far, your path takes you past the baths you are going to be paying a visit in a while, except you can hear a sound coming from them. A sound you are somewhat familiar with, in fact.
Carefully using your stealthy form as a two-dimensional construct, you peek into the bath and yes, there she is, the naginata hero, Tada Mizuki, masturbating while trying to keep quiet. Again.
Quickly taking up your usual safety distance, you transform back again, undress, and on you go, strolling right into the bath.
"Again?" You ask once you're squarely inside, the girl you're here for looking at you defiantly, but not stopping. "Looks like I was too delicate with you yesterday, if I left you horny enough that you are just begging to be caught like this again."
"I am not begging to be caught! I just- didn't have anything else to do, so I..."
"You know, it's amazing how obviously you mean the opposite of what you are saying." As you speak, you get into the bath, not wasting time and closing in on her immediately. "Perhaps I should just see for myself?"
Before she can speak up again, you launch into a kiss letting your tongue wrestle with hers as your hands roam her body, looking deep into her eyes all the while. You come up to 'breathe' frequently, just so you can initiate the next sloppy kiss again and again.
Before you know it, the shy girl screws up her courage, feeling you up in turn. You can't help but chuckle into her sweet mouth when she starts to squeeze your ass with both hands, though she moves on once she's satisfied to have her fill of your clearly muscled abs instead.
Inevitably, though, her curiosity draws her towards your hard dick, laying both of her slender hands on it and feeling along your hard length. Soon enough, one hand veers off to fondle your balls instead, even as you return the favor and lightly finger her little pussy.
Licking along her lips when you next come up, Tada looks at you a little nervously, though mostly giddy. "Want to... want to have sex?" She whispers, as though afraid of being overheard by her parents and punished for saying something so naughty, making you chuckle again.
"If you're sure you want to, then yes, I would very much like to have sex again." You smile at her. Taking a deep breath, she nods.
So, best do this right. Grabbing onto her, you whirl the two of you around, leaving you sitting on the row of seating she was on a moment ago and her perched on your legs. "You can set the pace, like this," you explain.
Swallowing deeply, the girl on your lap peers at your face, finding a reassuring smile as she inches closer to where your erection is jutting upwards, taking it in her hand tentatively. You, in turn, grab her butt, simply lifting her up a bit and drawing her closer so she can actually do what she's here for.
"Take your time, however long you need." She shakes her head, tensing up while she screws up her courage and adjusts the angle she's holding your cock at, pulling herself closer and pushing herself down, penetrating herself on your dick. She bites her teeth when half your length disappears inside her opening, immediately breaking her hymen.
You just gently massage her rear and whisper in her ear while waiting for her to overcome the pain, "It's alright," "It's getting better already" and such, stroking her back to encourage her to take deep breaths.
"I'm o-okay," she gasps after a few moments, wincing when she tries moving her waist. "I'm okay." You don't bother answering her, just gently grabbing her chin and raising her face upwards to kiss her instead. She slings both arms around your back, hugging you as you continue kissing her to distract her from her pain.
Eventually, you judge she is used to the feeling of being penetrated far enough to actually fuck, so you break up the kiss and nuzzle her face instead, your arms busy holding her small body. "Feeling alright now?"
Instead of responding verbally, this time it is her that answers you with actions instead of words, carefully raising herself up and lowering herself again, fucking herself on your dick a few inches at a time. She smiles at you proudly, though. "I-I'm fine. This actually feels pretty nice."
You just pat her head, letting her build up a steady rhythm and actually get a decent amount of dick in her as she begins riding your lap, steadily taking in more and more of you. Though she winces again when you hit her womb, making an effort to avoid sinking deep enough to ram into it again.
You, in turn, get back to fondling her all over, showing her how loved (hah!) she is as she begins panting and really building up speed, soon using the enhanced physical strength being a hero grants her to full effect, making you come deep inside her in short order, in turn triggering her own orgasm on her first creampie ever.
So the two of you rest for a bit, you deeply buried inside her, a bit of your cum slowly leaking out into the water.
"Hey," you start out once she's caught her breath again a bit, making her push herself back so she can look at you, her head having rested in the crook of your neck so far as her breathing evened out. "So, I feel our relationship has progressed to the point we really should introduce ourselves to each other formally."
With a giggle, she responds, making a mockery of a formal bow, considering she's still sitting on your lap, impaled by your dick. "Greetings, my name is Tada Mizuki, but please feel free to call me Mizuki, if you wish."
Smiling back at her, you set a kiss onto her nose, making her giggle again. "Greetings, my name is Gabriel Livsey, first name being Gabriel. And yes, as you may imagine, I'm from Earth."
She gapes at you this time, causing you to grin as you lightly grind your cock where it's still deep inside her, earning a gasp from her. Still, best to keep the show on running. "Before we continue, though, would you like me to use my power on you? It gives you a small range of powers in addition to the ones you already have."
She's still staring at you for a moment longer, before pouting a little as she looks away. "Okay... I trust you."
"Perfect, all it'll take is some of my blood and a bit of time." To her light alarm, you turn your fingers into claws and cut along your wrist, holding it over to her. "Here, drink."
"Jeez, that's a pretty morbid power you got there." Nevertheless, she does as you say, licking along the wound spilling forth small amounts of blood. Just the right amount of blood for what you're doing, actually- these little things your magic does in the background are always so very handy.
"So I imagine you have questions. Feel free to ask them while we do this."
"Okay, so how did you end up on this world? I thought there was no way to cross over here without the goddess' power?"
"Why, I was pulled over here by the goddess' power, just the goddess in question was the dark goddess instead of the light one. The demons were a tad bit desperate after the demon king died, you see, and so they pulled the same trick the humans did." Flexing your abdominal muscles a bit, you begin slowly thrusting into her again, making her stretch out her arms to support herself on your shoulders. "It just so happened that the demon king just got himself killed, you see, so I took up the position and proceeded to defeat the human army invading my new lands."
"Why would you- ummh- turn against humanity like that?"
"Eh, they're really just two sides made up of medieval people. If the losing side is willing to crown me king, why wouldn't I protect my new subjects?"
Even while you begin to contact both Sarah and the anal hero, you lean back a little while kneading her thighs, looking at her uncertain face. "I imagine the leaders of humanity spewed some crap about how demonkind was inherently evil or something along those lines, but I'll be straight with you in asserting that the armies of both sides used to be outright genocidal towards the other, at least until I took over. Both humans and demons are ultimately just people, just with different cultures resulting from different lifestyles."
While you were talking, you kept on feeding her your blood, though before you can launch into another little diatribe, Sarah's mental chortling stops you.
What's up? What happened?
In- in the other timeline- she tried to get up, but she tripped and your dick landed in her ass, so she fainted!
You do your best to ignore the outright laughter following that message, making sure you keep a good grip on her thigh with the hand you don't need to hold in her face for the thralling ritual.
"As to why you should join my side instead of the 'human' side... well, first of all, the power imbuing I'm doing right now lengthens your natural lifespan by several times, in addition to making you more beautiful over time until you reach your personal ideal, as well as the little power increases I already told you about."
It's not easy, but with a little effort, you can use your free hand to encourage her to start bouncing on your cock again, building up an amiable rhythm to which you can speak.
"Demons have a very 'might makes right' mentality. As the leader of their race, I can do just about anything as long as I am strong enough to make it happen, so none of them will complain even if you change sides, and they will certainly appreciate you far more than humanity ever would. What's more, I can eventually get you onto an earth, not necessarily yours, parallel worlds exist in nearly indefinite variations, but modern food, plumbing and the internet are a good reason to jump ship, I'd say."
It is by this point that she takes her mouth off your wrist, breathing deeply. "Alright, whatever, but, uhmm..." She wiggles a bit, gasping at what that does to her well-filled insides.
"You want me to keep on fucking you?" She nods mutely, making you chuckle again as you kiss the top of her head, her blush too cute to resist. Really, hurrah for horny teenagers.
Well, with another hero turned towards your side, all that remains is the rapier hero in terms of heroic presence inside the fortress, barring which you imagine you'd have a decent chance at taking it through a combination of the tunnels and the defense mechansim you discovered.
So, all you need now is to take out the rapier hero. Luckily enough, you already know where he sleeps, though you never entered the room so far, for fear of being discovered somehow- it's extremely hard to estimate how a hero's power can be used in different ways, though your anal hero soul didn't mention this guy had any way to perceive you more easily that he knows of.
It is that 'knows of' that bothers you, is all.
Keeping your newly subverted little heroine company a little longer after the thorough first time she just had with you, you eventually leave her with her thoughts, and her newly won thralldom twisting them.
Shadowing away, your path twists and turns as you move on into the area the rapier hero frequents, nearing the door to his room. Time to do this.
Sliding under the door, you take a look around. A pretty spartan room, a desk, a bed, nightstand, wardrobe, the stuff you would expect an officer to have around, but no real amount of personal items, decorations or such.
That said, you're not here to evaluate his interior decor, you're here for the occupant currently sleeping in the bed. To that end, you slide on over, climbing up the wall and slithering along the ceiling, directly above your victim.
Dropping while undoing your transformation, you're quite miffed when, despite your perfect sneak attack, the prey tries to push you off after you land, despite the hand blocking his mouth and holding onto his shoulder, respectively.
Your irritation only grows when his free hand pulls a short sword from under his pillow before you can close your jaws around his neck.
Before he can act any further, you extend your claws and try to make sure they touch as much of his bare skin as possible, triggering a surge of electricity that courses through his body without risk of affecting yourself.
You didn't actually know that last part, so it's a nice surprise to you. Still, his muscles lock up, and you don't suppose he will manage to unlock them in the next few seconds.
Or, in other words, never, given you're already clamping your mouth shut onto his neck, freely drinking all his blood, his weapon gliding out of numb hands.
Nishiyama Masashi really used to question why he was there, at the start. He liked to joke around to disperse tension, yes, but even he couldn't exactly make light of the bloody face of war, could he?
In the first place, he'd consider himself rather serious, despite his joking demeanour. That was just how he presented himself to others, really. So long as nobody else was around, he always would be down to the point and direct whenever possible, a true face that came closer to the surface the longer the entire class was engaged in this whole hero business.
Turns out that most of the people he dealt with in his new business appreciated seeing him take things seriously, so he just exchanged the way he presented himself. Easy.
When Teramoto told them about the 'high likelihood of a new antagonizing actor' among demonkind, he took him correspondingly seriously, immediately joining him and Tada in the Border Fortress instead of returning to the capital to party it up with the others, telling them he would just stay behind for a month or two, 'just to make sure'. He knew a lost cause when he saw one, may as well send them off with a smile and make sure they would come back in case his worries as to Teramoto's predictions coming true.
Turns out he was right all along, and he would die in his own bed, but at least he died just as he wanted to. A muscled man holding him down to the last, forcing him to hold still. Heh. He wasn't all that funny, in the end. Must be the lack of practice.
Taking a short moment to share some laughter with your sister at just how completely you are hollowing out the humans' fighting power without them getting a clue, you breathe out the soul you just ate, giving him a few simple and straightforward orders. Pretend to be himself and alive, let nobody know about this, blablabla. Basically the same things you told the anal hero.
With that done, you grab onto his corpse, still lying in his bed, and transform into your shadow form, darting off to return to the tunnel you've been using to get in and out, depositing it near the other hero corpse you brought here.
Okay, so the training with the maids was... harrowing, more so than usual. Halfway through, they got that weird gleam in their eyes, starting to swarm you regardless of what pose they were having you do at the time. Who knew actually training how to seduce people could be so tiring?
But now you're done (or at least decided to flee your inner palace for now), ready to return to what you really wanted to spend the day on.
Unravelling the secrets of your mysterious reality bending! Right after you are done sending a few thought messages, anyways. To that end, you tell your thrall and soul minions in the fortress to keep their eyes open for any commanders you should watch out for (not Tada, though, you don't want to shake her out of obeying you). Hopefully their observations will allow you to actually target important command infrastructure later on.
On that topic, you really should think about reconfiguring your undead composition- while they did good work so far, you are planning to have them participate in the attack of the fortress, and most of them are simply too big to maneuver inside the hallways making up the majority of your desired battlefield. To counteract this, you contact Okita to ask her to tell the demon commander to have him move your undead to a seperate area over the course of the day so you can work with them tonight. Oh, and to tell him that all the heroes inside the fortress are now dead or on your side.
Probably important, that last bit.
But now, finally, back to playing with magic.
It is a relaxed day, with most of it spent on you casting your ice beam spell, then thinking about ways it could be better before casting it again once you can- apparently, reality takes a while to reassert itself before you can break it in a specific way again. Slightly bothersome, but you can work with it.
Hello, Tada?
...Don't surprise me like that! Is that you, Gabriel?
It's me, indeed. I just wanted to tell you not to wait up for me tonight, I'm rather busy with the last preparations for attacking the Fortress.
Here I am, having just agreed to be yours, and you immediately neglect me in favor of your work. I-I mean, okay. I'll be waiting for you to make up for it, though!
Oh, don't worry. As soon as we have a little time, I'll properly 'reward' you for your patience.
That's good to hear.
A long and hard reward.
Cutting the connection with a smile as you imagine her face after your last dig, you proceed to give much the same message to your little bride languishing in wait for your next visit. You use those exact words, too, much to your further amusement.
With your inside agents aware of your plans, you make sure the rapier hero's soul is currently inside his room and said room is locked before desummoning him and instead getting out your buffer hero soul, having him use his power on you again, you know, the usual thing to do by now. With that in place, you first fly off back into the demon camp, your undead moved to a single area a little off from the rest of the camp. Perfect.
Setting down and transforming into your vampire form again, you look over what you have to work with and what undead you want to keep for later.
Deanimating your animalistic undead, you set to work on roughly splitting four of them into halves, setting the materials apart for now. So, you will need something small and fast to properly work inside the fortress' tight hallways, and you are working with material you are reusing several times over by now.
What this means is that, while you don't need much to work with, you need to be creative with what you have. First, you take one of the halves and begin to warp all the bone to the cadaver's outside, forming it into a 'faceplate', for lack of a better word, with more bone becoming a lot of small, but extremely sharp teeth. All the hard stuff you don't use up for this becomes either spikes on this plate or an outer covering for the legs you plan to make, being filled with lots of raw muscle.
Literally everything else you have you slowly, but surely turn into viable tentacles. All the tentacles. The biggest of which you repurpose as a big, fat tongue after some thought, after all, though most of them you fuse onto the back- and underside. The eyes you split into several parts, doing your best to keep them useable as you set them into the front.
As a last little touch, you fashion some of the spikes you added earlier into a pair of blades hidden on the underbelly, for use on anything the tentacles manage to catch rather than bludgeon.
Man, some of this takes a lot of time. The result looks promising, though, being slightly smaller than a person in height, but several times as dangerous.
Unfortunately, the repeated casts of your corpse-twisting spell take too long to get everything done you wanted to in the time you have available. Only four of the things were finished by the time you wanted to move on.
Well, these will just have to do for the time being. Metaphysically 'grabbing' two of each the slightly hot and shivering fragments, you imbue them into your newest creations once you have cast your animation spell on them.
The results are immediate- Two of them release an aura of... something, you can't actually make out what it is, while of the remaining two, one grows warm, almost hot to the touch, while the other lets out a gout of flame from its mouth, its tongue now permanently on fire.
You just- you won't question this, you'll just take what you can get and move on with your life. Calling over the demon commander, you tell your newest undead to obey his orders, then give him one last nod before turning back into an owl and moving on, back to the tunnel entrance you plan to take shortly.
Interlude: Nightmare Fodder
Rakul looked at what his new boss, or rather, just his boss by now, the 'new' part was wearing off, left for him, inspecting the horrific, spike-covered things made up of mostly spiky bone and tentacles.
He sighed. Couldn't he at least try to give him less nightmare fodder to deal with? And no, that one hero chick he picked up out of nowhere patting one of the things spreading a cold sweat to anyone looking at it between the eyes didn't make it any better.
Ugh.
Slipping into the tunnel leading to the central bastion again, you think for a moment on where to strike first. Questioning your anal soul minion, it seems most mages (that he knows of) stationed in the Border Fortress are the usual, bread-and-butter war mages, though a handful stick out.
For one, there is one alchemist employed by the local army, with their own little potions lab and regular shipments of materials for easily perishable potions to be made locally. A few mages, with their own little area, are more interested in the deeper mysteries of magic, and only really hired on to finance themselves, needing money and being unable to procure it otherwise for one reason or another. Lastly, there seems to be a reknown lightning mage leading a small platoon of other mages, a possible target if you just want a cool soul to use.
The issue is that, according to your source, they're living somewhat far from each other, another part of the fortress decentralizing anything it can, and there's a whole bunch of other, less remarkable mages aside from them anyways, so you don't think you will be eating all of them tonight.
Making your way through the (mostly) silent walls of the fortress, you proceed towards the series of mage's rooms your anal soul told you harbor the lightning mage you're after. It isn't long before you arrive, and you listen out for a moment, though you don't hear a sound aside from the snoring your senses manage to make out from some of the rooms.
Sliding through under the largest door right at the and of the hallway, you are greeted with what looks like a slightly upscaled version of the usual mage accommodations; even the furniture looks like the same stuff, just bigger. The bed, especially, looks bigger, even relative to the other furniture.
Sleeping upon it, you see what looks like your man. Blond hair, high cheekbones, fits the description you were given.
Sliding up on his bed, you place your shadow right onto his covered body, taking a last look around. No unpleasant surprises around that you can see, good.
Suddenly materializing, you grab onto both his arms, keeping him from doing anything even as you rear back. He tries to scream and alert anyone nearby, but you know from experience the walls are thick, and his lifespan is measured in seconds from the moment you got your hands on him.
You can feel a bit of static electricity gathering around you, but you're already digging your teeth into his throat, so you simply don't assume it will go anywhere in time.
You're right; it doesn't.
Arend was never quite comfortable being in his position as the 'flagship' mage of his division, knowing he wasn't all that good compared to most mages under his command, only bridging the gap between above average and great with a few artefacts he obtained both from his family and from the military. Being treated as better just didn't quite sit right with him, but on the other hand, he got better lodgings, better food and the adoration of crowds wherever they were stationed, so he just made the best of what he had and tried to live up to his own hype.
It wasn't that he didn't understand where his treatment came from, either- he knew he was nice to look at, a poster child for both the nobility as a whole and his unit, raising morale with his elite unit of mages. So while he wished they could have chosen someone else, he knew nobody else available had the right mix of handsome and capable, so he was stuck with the job. At least he COULD work his gifts to the betterment of his comrades, so he took what he got.
None of them liked being set up in the Border Fortress, but times were hard and everyone had to do what they could. At least they were just meant to be reserve troops in case the main army needed reinforcements after taking more casualties than first expected.
...The reports of said main army being shattered by a mysterious figure some of the men already started calling the 'Night Prince' by the time he heard about it made him smack his face, of course, but what can you do? They were a unit of decently powerful mages meant to raise morale, but if they had to fight, they had to fight.
Too bad he never even got to do that much in the end, though.
Taking a seat on the opulent bed, you lick your lips clean a little while pondering what to do now. Your strategy of stashing the corpses of your victims and replacing them with their souls was bound to hit the limit of how many souls you can have out at a time, though you could certainly keep on stashing the bodies in question.
Well, thinking about it, you are a necromancer. And you have a fresh corpse right there, with no interest in hiding it. The question answers itself if you think about it. A swift cast of Rise, my fleshly servant, and fulfill my will! later and you have a groaning undead lying on the bed.
Imbuing it with one of your fragments, it begins to groan and moan as though in deep pain, though it is readily apparent this thing is entirely mindless. You order it to stay unmoving inside this room until someone else enters it, then attack them.
Leaving the unmoving corpse be for now, you take a look around. It stands to reason this guy might've had something... interesting lying around, no?
Turns out that yes, he did. You find a few vaguely looking magical scrolls, a pair of potions and a ring you pocket, along with a wardrobe full of various outfits, though only one of those robes looks somewhat magical, with twisting embroidery made of golden thread sticking out to your eyes.
You also eye the magical staff this guy must've been using when he was alive once you put the robe on for transportation, then grab that, too. May as well, after all.
Giving the room a last once-over to make sure you didn't miss anything, you go shadow and race off towards the tunnel entrance, soon moving through the food storage room and down the secret entrance. Once downstairs, you detransform and begin packing your loot away neatly, folding the robe to have a place to put the other stuff on.
With that taken care of, you re-shadow and get upstairs once again. Now, whom to target?
It is a rather disappointing catch you made, but this grouping of mages stuck out to you as a seperate unit most likely meant to be a deatched fighting force, so you took the time to eat them all and made sure none of them had any nasty surprises just in case of you happening.
They didn't, but it doesn't hurt to be careful either way. With that done, then, you pause for a moment and think about whom or what to target next, before your nightly time runs out.
Actually, why not ask your little bride? You did ask her to keep an eye open for anyone to be eaten, after all.
Hello, sweetie.
What did you want this time?
You're pretty sure she is currently mentally pouting at you. Adorable.
You do remember me asking you to keep an eye out for anyone that should be eaten before the fortress is attacked, yes? Now's the time to tell me.
She stays silent for a long moment before the next thought comes your way.
Okay. Okay. I am not saying there is someone that should die in a fire... but. Hypothetically. If there was a mage commander stationed on the second wall. And he's been making advances at me, and I have no idea how to react to that. Would you consider just... making him go away? Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Say no more, just tell me where this hypothetical person that may or may not exist sleeps.
Because like fucking hell will you let anyone else just keep on existing after making a pass at your toys.
With a destination in mind, it doesn't take you all too long to rush down into the tunnel, pass through it, exit on the other side and switch to the first tunnel you found and entered, taking it to arrive near the second wall before tracing your mental map to make sense of her way description.
Thankfully, you can find the correct route to take, the guy's room not being too far from your bride's room. Makes sense, what with him commanding the whole unit and all. Taking a look at the door, you briefly think about how to do this.
This is an old hat to you by now, slither under the door, get into position, materialize to brutally murder and eat the target before said target can react, done.
It isn't even exciting or funny anymore by this point, though you suppose needs must, and all that.
Rafferty may not have been the hero the world needed, but he was the one the world deserved. At least, that's what he liked to think to himself. It wasn't that he was entirely wrong, being a mage commanding a unit of other mages, though he naturally wasn't all that great.
His magic was strong and reliable enough to justify his position, certainly, and he usually managed to kiss his superiors' asses hard enough they had no complaints about him either. But that's where his strengths ended, and the man began, and when looking at him objectively?
Either abrasive to his subordinates or trying to be nice to them in the hopes of getting some use out of them later on if they had potential, frequent brothel visits whenever they were passing through a town large enough to have one, freely molesting barmaids, siphoning funds whenever they wouldn't be found in his pockets, all the small things that added up to make himself feel better and left him in a better position compared to beforehand, so long as he was sure he could get away with it.
Until, that is, he tried to get into the pants of the wrong woman...
It is as you return into the comforting, sunless embrace of the tunnel you have adopted as your lair by now, just before you can launch into your usual diatribe of delegation, that you pause for a moment, an epiphany overcoming you.
You'd been continuously gathering more and more knowledge about how magic works in this strange, fantastical world, adding up small lines of thought, little tricks and shreds of fundamental knowledge from dozens of minds. It is at this moment that you have a thought.
'What exactly is the difference between what they do and what I do? Where do the laws of physics I know about play into it, and how do parahuman powers function in this framework?'
You do not have to fumble around with mana, and even your fragmented understanding tells you the stuff is necessary to work the magic. That said, the process of exercising your will onto reality? That's something both you and mages have in common, if through entirely different means.
Parahuman powers? They all were... wacky. Seemingly obeying the laws of physics, but only in very specific ways, and the energy, the mass, the complicated computation needed for some of the examples you know about from your college days? They are fundamentally different, in some vaguely defined way you can't quite out your finger on...
New Trait Gained: Mysteries And Wonders (Assisted by your artistic mind, you have progressed through the path of opening your eyes and seeing reality for what it truly is. All magic talent is raised up to 80)
After your usual morning ritual, this time involving a bit of fun debating various topics with the maids, you breathe yourself out and begin your preparations for the night. Meaning, you desummon both your souls currently out, then send thoughts at your thralls, instructing them as to where to go and what to do to open the secret doors leading down into the tunnels you've been using.
While they are on their ways, you go on and summon your chosen minions for the day; both Phillip and that one forcefully genderbent chick with some kinda replacing teleportation trick. The former you send off with exact orders to join the demons in their camp and assist their commander with planning out the attack, supported by you telling him what they need to know mentally.
The latter, on the other hand, you give orders to head into the opposite direction, enter the Fortress and cause some havoc as well as to murder a bunch of high ranking officers wherever possible. Or just enemies in general; you're not going to be picky about it.
Naturally, you're going to stay in contact with her, too, just in case she gets in way over her head and needs an emergency extraction. No point in wasting a perfectly good tool, after all.
Luckily, it isn't too long before Tada arrives, tentatively stepping along the ancient masonry seemingly forgotten long before either of you was born. When she sees you, she perks up, only to be overwhelmed when you fluidly walk up to her and take her in your arms, drowning amy words she was forming with a deep, long kiss.
It takes quite a bit for your little bride to find her way towards you, given she doesn't just have to navigate down her tunnel, she then has to find the rock you, in your infinite wisdon, had already moved to the side so she could actually come through the door, before returning all the way through the other tunnel.
Her gaping mouth when she sees you with a diminutive hero on your lap, idly stroking her back and obviously intimate with her, given the way she is nuzzling into you. You just smile and pat your free leg before returning to training.
You spend the majority of the day practicing your ice beam spell, despite the, frankly, embarrassing chant required. The two thralls with you at the time, when they aren't cuddling into you due to the lack of other furniture to rest on, join you in training, actually, Tada taking a stance near where you aim and slashing your beam out of the air with her naginata (which is bullshit) and Lana, as you learn your little bride is called, cast her own spells trying to hit your beams precisely while you keep them up.
Overall, a good time is had by all, though you're somewhat worried by the tension in the air, as well as the meaningful glances the two young women in your company share every now and then.
Turns out your teleporting minion didn't kill as many people as you'd have liked, having spent most of her time skulking in the shadows while trying to find important-looking people to use her power on, though any time she was discovered, she went wild, rapidly switching with anyone in sight and making a few of her opponents attack what their comrades thought to be one of them, then actually placing one of said comrades at where the hurt was incoming.
Overall, a about two dozen commanders of various descriptions died, as well a several times that in common soldiers, and even a handful of mages whenever she found them- turns out the common warmage spells aren't that great against a rapid teleporter that puts your friends where you aim, but ah well, such is life. Though she did suffer more than one close call during the course of her mission, mostly through being too careless and being in a bad position to see an enemy that saw through her illusion after teleporting, nothing more than scratches really found their way onto her.
Leaving her to keep on going at it for now, you ask your thralls to wait a few hours while you go take care of something real quick, then utilize your transformation powers to, once again, enter the demon army's camp, homing in on the pile of meat that is the undead you deanimated when you were last here.
Luckily, this time you've already got the overall idea in mind and don't have to puzzle out too much about how to put them together, so you create more of your skittering abominations out of what you have available. If the zombies you left inside the Fortress hasn't been put down by now, it is now, you making space for your new creations.
All in all, you now have seven of the things waiting to be deployed inside the camp, along with your two wyverns and your siege-beast.
Alright, that should sum up your collection of forces for the foreseeable future, or at least you can't think of anything else to do or get for the time being. Thus, you first return to the tunnel, then have your thralls waiting there follow you out of there and right back into the camp.
Nobody challenges you despite your companions, a clear sign they're at least smart enough to tell the underlings not to bother you no matter what. Beckoning them into the demon commander's tent, you seat yourself onto the small desk said commander and Phillip seem to have been using to plan out strategies and ideas in a physical manner.
Looking at everyone inside, you let a small smile form on your lips as you fold your hands together.
"Now then," you drawl, "let's talk strategy."
First thing you do, you make sure that everyone's on the same page, thus you go through all the info already established so far (after calling over Okita just so she knows what's up, the reunion between the estranged classmates a little awkward to watch).
So, the setup of the fort, the truly labyrinthine inner passageways indeed designed to bleed out and blunt any attacking force, decentralized... everything, from command structure to basic supplies, over to the secret tunnels giving you access to both the inner bastion and second wall, as well as the secret room inside one of the random command rooms controlling the extremely deadly stone traps capable of changing the setup of the pathways on a dime.
The demon commander happens to ball his fists hard enough his nails open wounds on his palms. Judging by the discolorations you spied on said palms earlier, this isn't the first time the topic got him... 'invested'. "I kept watch on the walls of that fortress for twenty years, never saw any indications of that shit, and when the fortress finally does come under attack, nobody fucking uses that shit?"
"Well, the traps still need someone to manually use them, so if the demon higher-ups knew about the things, they were likely busy running already by the time the demon king bit it. At least it means the humans likely don't know about them, so they never spent too much effort looking for the control room."
Everyone gives him a minute or two to calm down after your explanation, his heavy breathing clearly audible, before you move on. "So, my plan so far is to use the tunnels to infiltrate the inner bastion itself, where we can use a mix of surprise tactics and the traps to drive any human forces in our way into a corner and mow 'em down. That does mean I'll have to sneak into the control room by myself, being the only one that can arrive there fast enough and keep up with the fighting so long as one of my thralls keeps me updated as to what's happening and, more importantly, where the fighting is happening. At least the skitterlings will be useful during that time."
"Is that what you call them?" Okita asks, having perkde up at their mention. "They're cute."
Everyone looks at her for a moment, before you reach over and pat her head. "They are, aren't they? And almost completely expendable, to boot- I can just make more later."
Okita nods happily, apparently accepting your reasoning. Or just enjoying the headpats, you're not sure. Either way, time to move on.
"So, anyone have anything to add?"
What follows is a lengthy session of you providing an accurate map of the current state of the Fortress' hallways, and though you caution them that this WILL change during the fighting,you can just change it back at your leisure, so you can still work out an overall route to take for your forces, hopefully letting them avoid facing too many concentrated defenders at once while still steadily killing their way through the humans stationed throughout the fort.
Is there anything else you could think of?
"Also, we will, of course, be using both Phillip's and the buffer hero's power to allow everyone to work in concert and above the level they should be capable of. Phillip, if I'm right, you should be able to use the buffer's power through your power, basically reassigning the benefits as needed without diluting them too much.
Even aside from that, though, being connected to your power should allow me to utilize the traps with much greater precision than otherwise, so make sure you tag me before I walk off. Also, a general thing for everyone, avoid mercy killing anyone; I can take care of that after the battle."
Giving your teleporting minion a quick message along the lines of Desummoning you now, you do as you said and take a step towards where your thralls have gathered, two of which are eyeing Phillip with a mix of wariness and confusion.
Hugging Tada, you give her a peck on the lips as you squeeze her butt, answering her confuzzled look with a smile. "For good luck." Opening your arms for Lana, too, she steps into your embrace, receiving her own kiss (and grope).
You turn to Okita to give her her own grope, not sure if the intimacy of a kiss is alright with her yet. However, when you try to release her, she shakes her head, pulling you closer with one hand while pushing her hair off her forehead with the other.
Giving in to her outing look, you press a soft kiss on her forehead, making her smile happily and release you. Next off, organizing a small army moving into the right tunnel, quietly enough to avoid notice by the nearby fortress.
At least Phillip's power will help this along.
You leave the actual work to those more suited to it, of course, and once you are connected to Phillip's power, you go shadow and race ahead, leaving the rest of your army in the dust. It isn't long before you find the command room containing the secret room, currently filled with a gaggle of commanders discussing over a map of the surrounding area, though nobody's actually looking at it. From the looks of it, your minion did good work, getting the garrison riled up after the many deaths along their command structure.
Only question is, do you murder them right now, or do you sneak past them and seal them inside the room with the stone slate that blocks the door?
It's a tight fit, but you manage to keep your shadowed self out of sight entirely as you slither over towards the secret room. Squeezing through the wall mechanism, which is a really tight fit, but doable without complications in your current state, you find yourself in the small room containing the miniature of the fortress.
All that remains now is waiting for the signal from one of your thralls, then the fun can begin.
We are starting to move. Also, the Skitterlings are cute.
Thanks for the update.
Adjusting your sightline on the miniature Fortress, you position yourself so you can both keep an eye on it and the blood of the men in the command room moving and gesturing about.
Tell me when you're nearing the end of the corridor to your right after leaving.
Will do.
Now it's just a matter of time until they meet the enemy. In the meantime, you'll just keep the connection open and observe your... next door neighbors, as it were.
We've arrived, and there are people coming in from both directions.
As you thought, yes. Turns out having an almost complete map of not only the passageways and rooms, but also where soldiers are stationed is almost unfair towards the people you're luring into horrible deaths.
Almost being the operative word here, you silently snicker to yourself as you flip the switch.
Oooh, they went splat. Thanks, Gabriel.
Don't worry about it, Okita. You just take care of the other half of your opponents.
No need, she counters. The Skitterlings are playing with them already.
Ah well, you suppose you'll just leave everything to go as planned for the time being, then.
This being a military installation, it naturally follows that the chain of command must not only be followed, but also supplied with information relevant to the operation of the place. Or to put it simply and without pretenses: It isn't long before a runner comes by to inform the men in the command center next to your current location of the demon horde that suddenly appeared inside the 'secure' innermost area of the Border Fortress. He actually passes by your little perch, so you have a great opportunity to time this just how you want to.
Alright, may as well keep everyone involved from going anywhere. Before the courier can actually enter the command room, you flip a little switch and listen to the grinding sound as a block of solid rock drops right in front of the runner, barring anyone from entering or leaving the room he was supposed to come to.
You listen to the surprised shouts the military officials inside the room let out with a small smile on your face, and idly observe the message boy disbelievingly touching the flat surface that turned the hallway he was just running along into a dead end. Now, question is, what do you do next?
Alright, time to eat the only person that saw what just happened with a chance to tell someone else about it. Shadowing yourself, you slither right out of your little hidden room again, making your way across the room up on the ceiling before squeezing past the stone block keeping anyone else from passing through.
The messenger, in the meanwhile, has managed not to panic and turn around, obviously planning to go bring both his original news and news of what just happened to other officers spread throughout the Fortress. Too bad for him he won't have the opportunity to, now is it?
Unshadowing right above and in front of him, you let yourself drop from the ceiling and right onto him, throwing him to the ground with a well-placed flying kick before throwing yourself onto his prone form.
"Sorry, kiddo, but this is the end of the line for you."
Before his terrified eyes, you unhinge your maw, revealing the array of enormous (relative to human sizes) teeth inside to him before you tear into him, giving him just enough time to scream for a few moments before he dies.
Gabriel? Are you there?
Yes, sorry, I was a little busy just now.
Alright. I just wanted to tell you we've made our way through the first circuit and are splitting up now.
Give me just a few moments to get everything ready and keep you from being attacked from behind.
Boris was just a simple farm boy, and when the call went out to aid the legions laying siege on the abominable demons threatening their homelands, he decided to stand by his countrymen and do his duty. So he told his family, and after a tearful goodbye with his parents and siblings, his elder brother apologizing for having to stay behind to inherit the farm, his younger siblings too young to go, off he went.
To the other soldiers he was still too young, too, but now that he was there already, he became the messenger boy of his division, just delivering everything from orders to requisition orders. Not that he would complain, mind you; as long as he was being useful, he was satisfied.
So when their quarters in the Border Fortress, the oldest manmade building existing, or so some said, came under attack out of the blue, he was naturally sent off to report as much.
Not that he managed to.
Getting up off the suddenly completely bloodless corpse, you look in on the blood outlines of the guys inside the currently barred room. They still seem to be panicking about their new circumstances, so you come back into the hidden room the way you came. Once there, you immediately trigger the traps needed to make sure your army cannot be attacked from behind, then listen out for anything you need to take care of.
Okita, everything's ready. Feel free to work your way through the floor you entered on, then follow the plan and move upwards.
Will do. Also, the little cuties are very good.
That's nice to know. You do your best to convey a smile through your thoughts. For now, you simply wait until your 'expertise' is needed again.
It is about an hour or two of constant fighting that follows, with you and Sarah putting in double duty, her using Coil to make sure nobody fucks anything up too badly and yourself conveying reports of what is happening with the various groups spreading throughout several parts of the fortress, as well as giving out orders where appropriate.
Mostly on when to send in the skitterlings instead of having your soldiers fight, as they tend to be perfect counters to the kind of opposition that would stop your advance otherwise. Funnily enough, the passageways tend to be tight enough they can stretch their legs and walk entirely up above their targets, their strong tongues muscle enough to whip out and wrap around a single limb at a time before retracting and pulling their prey into their mouths.
Filled with many, many very sharp teeth. Suffice to say, few of the people involved enjoy the experience.
If they can't just overwhelm the enemy through this, though, they really get going, using their tentacles, hidden blades and the obvious blades along their legs to murder the fuck out of several enemies at a time. The only regrettable thing about their construction is the lack of armor anywhere but the face and legs, meaning they can be damaged by the enemy soldiers whenever they're busy with other victims. This already cost you one of them, the skitterling in question being used to save a group's ass that, according to Sarah, would have actually taken severe casualties to the point of routing if you didn't have it go berserk.
One of the other groups is led by Okita, and she, uh... just immediately kills most things in the way. You don't really need to do much on her account.
Surprisingly enough, you don't really have too much to do with your hands. Sure, the mental aspect of your work far outweighs the effort you're putting elsewhere, but even so, aside from the occasional careful flick to either cut off enemy reinforcements or divert their forces so as to give your soldiers an easier time, you're rather idle.
And so you just... get a little creative.
Elsewhere
"Johnny! No! You can't die!" The man whose lower body was crushed by the sudden block of solid stone, together with the rest of their unit, coughed a shaky laugh, blood spittling in front of him.
"It's alright, Johnny," their names being identical having become an old joke between them by now, he just sobbed a smile back at him, "just... promise me one thing? Take care of my family for me."
It would be the last thing he ever said. "JOHNNY! NOOO!"
Back at Gabriel's location
Ah well, hopefully you hit a few people, but at least someone's day must've been ruined by the sudden changes in the layout, you hope.
It takes a rather long time, but soon enough, your army, spread into small groups by now, has scourged all the humans inside the inner bastion of the Fortress. They are now either lying dead in the hallways, caught and getting thrown into secured room watched over by demons not hesitating to strike them down the moment they muck up.
You're also getting a steady stream of messengers from the walls to both sides reporting the stone traps randomly coming down, but those are getting killed before they can take a look at who is greeting them for the moment.
Interlude: Dealing Death
Okita thrust her sword forwards, spearing through two humans at once. The passages around here could get annoyingly tight, making proper swings a non-starter as far as she was concerned. Not that she needed them; honestly, killing humans wasn't any harder than killing demons.
Shaking the worst of the blood and viscera off her blade, she took a look around. Looks like that was all of this group. Shaking her head, disappointed at their weakness, she used her blood control to remove the rest from her weapon. "Is everyone accounted for?"
"Yes, ma'am!" The demons following along behind her exclaimed. Nodding her head, satisfied, she flicked her fingers, calling the cutie to her side. Patting its spikes, she slowly proceeded to march forward, happy about the excited growling escaping it.
They really were just too cute.
Okita? Could your group take a detour on the next left, one of the other groups needs a little help.
Okay.
Doing as Gabriel told her, she took her hand off her pet and stepped forth, the rest of her group scrambling behind her. To her pleasant surprise, the next series of rooms populated by enemies was much more roomy, giving her enough space to really get to swinging.
Most of them were looking in the other direction, from which she could hear fighting, but that didn't matter. The few of them keeping watch breathed in, no doubt to shout in alarm, but she didn't give them time to do so. Their blood could serve the same purpose, anyways.
Putting all her weight into a mighty swing of her sword, she razed through the first two lines of people, their limbs and organs and other bits raining down onto the backs of their friends. The other people in the room turned around, just as the lower halves of her first targets began to drop, if they didn't get thrown off their feet with the force of her initial strike.
She withdrew her sword for the next strike. Now they all began to shout loudly, doing just what she tried to keep them from doing in the first place, the cacophony of their voices almost immediately causing her a slight headache. Such an annoyance. Just in that moment, while she was trying to think of how to get them to shut up already, the cutie following her burst into the room, followed by the demons.
A good girl. Did cuties have genders? Didn't matter. Good girl. Especially as it then proceeded to make them shut up one after the other, a ball of flailing mayhem as it threw itself into the throng of humans.
Good point. Just kill them all. It was what she was planning in the first place, but yes, it didn't matter how she could kill them the fastest if she could just kill them all anyways. Nodding with satisfaction again, she slung her sword over her shoulder and began using said shoulder as lever point to smash it onto her men before her without hitting the cutie.
Her sword. She never bothered naming it like all of the others did. It was just a sword. Giving it a name didn't make it any more 'cool' than it was beforehand. That was just stupid.
Ah, one of the men just poked the cutie in the backside! It didn't seem to mind, but she still kicked him where it hurts and cut off his head. Serves him right.
Really, why didn't anyone else appreciate the good things in life? At least Gabriel would pamper her. Though she was still annoyed he gave that other girl a kiss by himself, but she had to ask. Meanie.
Even after exiting the secret room you spent the night in and massacring the poor sods that just spent that same night fruitlessly scratching on a wall, you decided you may as well continue eating before the food goes bad, aka the prisoners bite it, so you link up with your forces again, noting how the lack of manpower is really the biggest obstacle to properly controlling the ground you took at the moment, though your men are managing to work around the issue to some extent.
Freeing up some of them from watching over the 'food stores' while also reducing the number of mouths to feed strikes you as an excellent way to ease the load on your logistics, so you waste no time doing exactly that. Suffice to say, you keep on drinking and merrymaking throughout half the night.
With your feast of soldiers completed, you turn to the one portion of people you haven't taken a big bite out of yet; namely, the mages. Would be a shame if any of them managed to get loose and start casting the moment they get a staff, after all, and while you see the appeal of keeping a bunch of people around to ship off towards the capital as rations for you and your sister or to be sold off, there's still about half a fortress full of prisoners and corpses to make, with low chance of you actually getting any such use out of the majority of them due to the sheer logistical headache that is transporting unwilling people through your territory en-masse while having to garrison your army right at the border.
The disparity in numbers means it's just much more efficient to use up any of them in easy reach before you get even more, and such you do. The danger of escapees tends to go down proportonially to how many of them are in your stomach, after all, magic or no magic.
Kiron was, some would say, the greatest mage of his generation. He, of course, would smack them over the head if they did so in his presence. He would be the first to explain that mages cannot be directly compared like that, and that anyone trying to do so ought to rethink their way of looking at the world.
Not that this helped him set people straight, what with that strange insistence he was just being humble out of consideration for his peers. At least his old friend Phillip would always have a bottle of cheap beer on hand to share as they groused over the youngsters, in-between their busy period as they organized the army and conducted their research, respectively.
When the heroes were summoned, both of them spent a whole night discussing the situation, coming to the conclusion that while they both abhorred sending children to war, the greater good resulting in them using their extraordinary powers against their foe would outweigh having them do so in the first place.
Oh how he hated the greater good.
But regardless, their decision was made, and so they at least had to make sure each of said children would return from the war in one piece, and thus he became their teacher in all things magic. Some of them had an easier time time picking up his lessons than others, but all of them learned at an extraordinary rate, filling him with pride not when they succeded through their blessings, but when they failed at first and then succeded despite their difficulties.
In fact, they made him recall the olden times, when he and Phillip were both fresh youngsters themselves, roaring to go out into the world and prove themselves. Well, him more than Phillip, he was almost a decade older than him. And they didn't really start as friends, that only happened after a series of unlikely events whence they saved each other's lives on the regular against their will.
He still maintained that that gryphon had no business nesting in those woods, by the way.
But yes, his time teaching the heroes inspired him. More than once, he caught himself daydreaming of becoming an educator, conveying his teachings to the next generation of mages. Phillip liked to laugh when he brought it up, but his wistful smile made it clear he didn't disagree with the notion.
Just this one last war, they told each other. One last crusade, with the aid of the heroes from another world and the blessing of the goddess, then it'd be over, and a new part of their respective life would begin.
Too bad neither of them had the opportunity, in the end.
Still licking your lips after that one soul you ate- just the right kind of fruity-sweet, you have a few runners sent for the people you want to have a talk with. Meaning the demon commander, considering you can just mentally tell everyone else to come to you.
Before long, you, said commander, Phillip and both heroes present on the premises are taking a seat inside the room you actually killed all those commander-looking people in. Actually, a few puddles of blood are still awaiting mop-up, but like hell are you going to leave the secret room controlling the traps out of your sight for any longer than you need to.
Before you can begin the meeting, however, Okita looks around, pouts at you as she gets up, and walks over to sit on your lap. A little confused as to why she is doing this, you idly pat her head to get her to calm down, even as Tada blushes a little.
Teenagers. Seriously.
With a wry smile on your lips, you resist shaking your head as you begin. "So, we have successfully taken the innermost part of the Border Fortress, the key to the traps spread throughout it in our possession. Our next task will be to drive the human army spread throughout the fortress walls out, preferrably without having them spill out all over demon territory. But first, how is our current situation? Casualties, supplies, that kinda thing?"
"Well boss," the demon commander starts, "We took most of the fortress by defeating the enemy in detail and repeated pinpoint application of force. Most enemies got driven through with minimal opposition, though not none, as you can imagine. We got a few dead and a few wounded, but the latter will have sorted themselves out by now. Without those spider things taking the brunt of the damage off us, we'd look at way more dead, so thanks for that.
In terms of supplies, we're good. Better than good, really. Some of the men are still wandering through the place and marking storerooms to plunder, but we won't run out of weapons or food anytime soon."
"Very good. Now, anyone have any suggestions as to how to approach the inner and outer walls?"
"For once, we should concentrate on one side of the fortress. We can leave a skeleton crew behind in the inner bastion to make sure, but now that we have a defensible position like this, it's be a shame not to use it." Yes, thank you, Phillip, that was very helpful. And judging by your expression, you're not very happy about it, huh? Not like anyone gives a fuck, though.
"Alright, so who agrees to leaving a few men behind in the inner bastion while the rest of us storm the inner walls facing the demon side of the border?"
Nobody disagrees, so you'll take it as agreement. Though Tada has a complicated look on her face, she isn't speaking out, so you'll simply have to pamper her a little when you have time.
Ending the discussion, you ask Rakul, as the demon commander's name turned out to be, after any outstanding mages under his command that could use some equipment you took off a prominent lightning mage. With some fresh new directions, you walk off, idly casting the soul fragment collection spell as you move through the fortress.
Unfortunately, it seems quite a few of the lingering fragments has dissipitated already since the time of you taking the fortress and now. Unfortunate, and slightly annoying, though maybe there's some kind of reason for it? Some external factor that speeds up the rate at which they dissolve? A thought to keep in mind for later, at any rate.
Arriving in the mage quarters your mages took over for themselves, incidentally also containing Lana, you enter their common area and look around for the demon Rakul described to you.
Luckily enough, you don't have to look for long, those animated little wings floating behind her hard to miss, not that that feeble excuse for clothing winding around her would've made it much harder even without those. Tucking the small package consisting of the robe, ring and staff you took off that lightning mage guy out of the crook of your arm, you approach her.
"Hey there, Rakul told me you have a thing for lightning spells?"
Eagerly saluting you, she looks right at your face. "Yes, sir!"
"In that case, you may find some use for this. I took these items off a lightning mage while I was busy sabotaging the defenses, but I don't use magic, so may as well give them to someone that can actually use them."
She gulps. "Is- is that really okay, sir?"
"As I said, I have no use for them. Just take this stuff and use it, that's all I ask. Oh, also, no idea what exactly any of it does, so, dunno, make sure it gets identified before you put it on."
"Sir, yes, sir! I'll prove I am worthy of these, sir!"
Pushing the stuff at her when she makes no indication of taking them in favor of keeping up her salute (while standing on her toes for some reason), give her a lazy wave while waking off. Now, time for the fun part of the night. And by fun part, you mainly mean sending your men to go butcher humans.
Entering the safety of the secret room you decided to make your personal battle station while inside the fortress, you make sure all your souls and thralls are accounted for and ready before the assault. Once it starts, however, you have very little to do, as the previous battle proved, and thus you begin idly drawing the fragments lurking in the back of your mind, in that metaphorical, not-space together into groups.
However, even as you idly lower and raise random blocks in areas of the inner wall not currently filled with your soldiers, you're still not exactly busy, and as such you decide you may as well chat a little with Sarah, maybe even get an answer to a question that's been bothering you for a while now.
Hey Sarah, you begin, wondering how to put this into words before abandoning all attempts at subtlety, do you have any idea how the maids work?
What do you mean how they maids work? They just... work.
That's not what I mean. This is about stuff like them just somehow knowing what I'm going to need way before I do, or just having anything I require already on hand, somehow.
I think you're being overdramatic again, Gabe. Remember that time you thought the school janitor was secretly eating children and giving the leftovers to the cafeteria?
Hey, he still turned out to be a child molester, so I was on to something all along!
And have you considered the maids are just very good maids?
Absolutely inconceivable!
And here we go again...
You smile at Sarah's exasperated thought, knowing she's wearing the same smile. May as well keep on goofing around with her while your hands are busy, you suppose, thus the two of you continue on speaking about your crazy little conspirarcy theories you spun when you were younger, Sarah's progress with painting, the current state of the battle, anything at all.
Interlude
"Sir, it's started again!" Gors grimaced at the call ringing out. They'd already lost several men to the sudden activation of these traps nobody had any idea of until yesterday, and he still hadn't received any orders from high command. The situation was starting to look untenable; they couldn't exactly hold a fortress that was actively trying to kill them.
"Alright, everyone, I want you to carefully walk back into the canteen and wait until this passes. Same as last time, really. Keep an eye on each other and if someone goes missing, yell. Now go!"
It was as their unit rounded a corner, however, that they saw the ugly truth facing them: One of the slabs of stone was blocking the corridor they needed to take... and the sound of fighting was approaching in the meanwhile.
"Fuck! Okay, formation, everyone, and get ready to fight; whoever this is, I doubt they're friendly. Make way, I'm leading."
Unfortunately, just as he was about to arrive at the front of the formation, a second stone block came down, crushing their vanguard and sealing their group inside the hallway.
"Well... fuck." Gors wasn't sure which of his men said that, but he wasn't going to bother trying to find out.
They were all thinking exactly that, anyways.
You're having a good time, here in your little room and as close to in your sister's company as you can get right now.
Luckily, the fight doesn't last too long, between Okita blazing through any and all opposition and you setting up killing fields or obstacles at your leisure, the humans simply didn't have much of a chance. Before long, your forces are in complete control of the inner wall, though you're fairly sure the suckers stationed at the outer wall might've gotten a clue as to what is going on by now.
May or may not have to do with the groups currently attacking your men, though they soon retreat back into their wall's bulwark. Looks like they aren't stupid enough to throw themselves at prepared positions, no matter how those used to be manned by their comrades until very recently.
Well, you'd say Okita has earned herself a reward after a good job like this, but on the other hand Tada looked like she might need some work to make sure she stays motivated to be a good girl. Then again, there's no reason you can't reward them both, now is there?
Quickly locating an appropriately lavish bedroom (turns out Rakul made sure you'd have one available), you ask the girls in question to meet you there. You, of course, take a moment to look around inside, finding nothing you need to take care of, and throw off all clothing covering your upper body before draping yourself onto the wide bed.
You are ready.
It isn't long before a knock resounds from the door, prompting you to call out "Enter.", followed by a slightly confused Tada coming inside, only to blush when she spies your half-naked form. "W-why did you call me here?"
"Why, my little hero, I wanted to give you a reward for the great job you've been doing lately. To that end, I've set aside a few hours just to cuddle."
Tada stammers and looks around nervously a little, as if afraid someone might be hiding and just waiting for her to approach you to jump out and accuse her of... something. Completely preposterous, of course, the only other person you're expecting to come by would never bother with hiding or waiting, she'd just say it straight away and get back to what she was doing.
And speak of the devil, Okita casually bursts through the door, letting it swing shut behind her and surveying the room. Her gaze glides straight over Tada, all but ignoring her, but once she sees you on the bed, she immediately comes walking towards you and throws herself onto the sheets, coming to lie with her back towards you and inching backwards to cuddle up.
Chuckling, you press a little kiss onto the crown of her head, making her turn around to face you, only to receive another on onto her lips. Strangely happy, she smiles at you for a bit before turning back to Tada, frozen with shock at the scene before her, and tilts her head a little.
"Come on, Tada, don't you want to join in?" As you say this, you raise your free arm (the one Okita is not currently hugging) to indicate where to come.
Tada blush reaches across her face and up to the tips of her ears, but she mutely nods, circling the bed and slowly crawling onto it, joining your embrace.
She squeaks when she sees what exactly your Okita-arm is currently doing, specifically groping a satisfied-looking Okita, only to sqeak again when her arm makes its way under her skirt, gently squeezing her cute little butt.
Nothing much happens beyond you groping the two little heroes you've enthralled, though the little talks between the three of you in the time before they both drift off to sleep in your arms are quite enlightening. For once, Okita apparently completely forgot Tada's name, and possibly that she was also one of the summoned heroes at all.
You'd consider this as one of the reasons Okita never got along with anyone, she just literally doesn't care about them, their names or their appearances. In fact, you note she mentally renamed your skitterlings as cuties by now, to the point she was confused when you asked for clarification. Could it be she just gives things nicknames she can remember them by easier, and replaces their proper names with those nicknames, making it harder for her to recall the names she was given in the first place?
Either way, you're fairly sure she may need professional help if she is to ever be a member of society... that or perfect memory, though you're not sure she'd actually solve this issue with that. She doesn't consider it an actual issue, after all, so all perfect memory would do would be making it easier for her to remember names after being told about them, already actively thinking in her newly made-up names.
Then again, you're no psychologist, so what do you know? Not like you give a fuck, after all, Okita can remember your name just fine and that's enough for you to work with, after all.
Tada, on the other hand, seems a mix of sad and resolved when you tell her about Okita's issues telepathically, making an active effort to memorize the names Okita calls her by so she can get a feel for how she works. It's pretty adorable, actually, watching her assert that she uses a naginata, so she should be called 'Naginata' rather than 'Halberd'.
So, once both your little guests have fallen asleep eventually, you ponder what you shall do next, the end of the timeframe you apportioned quickly approaching, as is dawn.
Lying there with the two girls in your arms and listening to their quiet breathing, you send a telepathic thought at both of your current soul minions.
Desummoning both of you in a moment, finish up anything you were doing.
With that done, you slowly and carefully shift so neither of your currect bedmates are putting too much weight on you, then concentrate for a moment as you turn into your shadow, extracting yourself from both of them and reforming just outside the room you were in moments prior.
Taking a moment to breathe in your minions, you instead breathe out both the anal hero and that really, really sweetly tasting mage you snagged earlier. A short conversation reveals he even comes with a power aside from his pretty decent magic, some kind of tutoring ability? You'll check it out later, you suppose. For now, you tell both of them to be silent and follow you inside.
Keeping communication entirely silent to avoid waking up the sleeping beauties, you point them at the crest emblazoned on Okita's revealed thigh, telling them to take a look and explain to you what they can make out. Both of them step closer, observing the crest itself and mumbling a bit in their thoughts, before eventually turning to you.
The base of this crest is the common lust crest, though I'm sure anyone could've told you that with ease even without seeing it in person.
What is unusual about this crest, though, are the recursive triggering mechanisms. For every activation criteria fulfilled, the effect gets exponentially stronger, and there are several of them hidden along the design.
For one, there's the classical personal activator. Whoever made this crest, they can activate it as long as they're aware of where the crested is at the moment of activation, a simple and classic method. This can, in fact, be transferred to someone else so as to allow the activator and the crestmaker to be different people, a common practice for commercial uses, though this hasn't been done in this case.
Another one are two conditional triggers, bound to activate as long as the crested is doing something specific, in this case. From what I can make out, they are meant to be used whenever this young lady fights someone or something that shares a specific commonality with the crestmaker. This is usually used for slavery crests, forbidding the slave from attacking the race of their masters, though it has found many uses in other fields, as well.
Another trigger I found is a copy of the personal activator, just meant to be permanently active until manually shut down. It is connected to the other triggers, so it may keep them all active all the time until shut down, though I'm not entrely sure.
Hm. This gives you a bit to work with, at least, as well as a few questions to ask Okita once she's awake again. For now, though, you desummon anal guy and bid the other guy, Kiron, as you found out earlier, to follow you into one of the nearby unoccupied rooms. Time to get to training.
Over the course of the day, you find out a lot more about Kiron's power. Every time you begin to slow in your progress, he feels the urge to point something out or say something that inspires you towards another direction, or just the sight of him jogs something in your mind that directs you towards getting down what you're working on.
At the end of the day, you're pretty sure you've got the spell to take soul fragments and form them into a discrete entity down, and even start working on your corpse-forming spell a bit. Yeah, this guy is pretty handy.
Alright then, time to continue dominating the fortress. Specifically, having your men advance into the outer wall, demonside, while you continue playing with the traps. Unfortunately, you don't have a complete map of this section, the depths of your stolen knowledge exhausted at the inner wall, but fuck it, this isn't actually all that hard now that they're used to it.
You, certainly, can't be arsed to keep on cartographing the entire current state of the fortress, so they'll just have to make do with what they got. Not like your undead can't just smash through most opposition, effectively reducing the fronts your soldiers have to fight on by one no matter how prepared the enemy's killing grounds are.
At the end of it all, you note you have a few more casualties than the previous days, but they're still at a very acceptable rate of attrition, given what you're doing. Though you note another two of your skitterers were damaged sufficiently to drop, annoyingly enough.
Emita, or Tor as 'he' was known in this guise, always was an envious person. She always wanted what others had, and to that end she learned how to become those others. She trained and developed the means to take advantage of the death of people and acting in their place, slipping off one mask to become another.
Sometimes she used this to escape the consequences of her actions, sometimes to abuse and destroy the reputation of an innocent person, sometimes for the money, or sometimes just because it caught her fancy.
When she heard that the famous archmage, Kiron, was to be stationed at the Border Fortress, she couldn't pass up the chance, so she killed and replaced a random recruit, taking on the identity of Tor, and spent 'his' time around the Border Fortress studying the humble archmage, waiting for an opportunity. Unfortunately for her, you were a more dangerous predator.
Marcus always admired the priests and priestesses of the Goddess, the way they would selflessly aid those in need. This drew him closer to the faith, but unfortunately, he lacked any talent for magic, being left without a way to join the clergy.
This would not deter him, however, from doing good in his own way, studying medicine under any master that would take him, becoming a reknown apothecary in his hometown, helping those that the clergy simply wasn't able to heal. When the war rolled around, he was initially unwilling to enlist, considering it his lot in life to preserve life over all else, but eventually reconsidered due to both his faith and the simple pragmatism of going where he was needed the most, aka where the most wounded would occur.
This led him to be stationed in the Border Fortress, using simple medicine to treat a wide variety of ills, including some of these poor sods that went with the main offense army and bearing wounds upon both their bodies and minds. However, when the time came for the Border fortress itself to be attacked came, he was caught and brought to the man that called himself the new demon king...
Drinking your fill of blood from the soldiers captured at the outer wall, as well as a few leftovers from the inner bastion, you are pleasantly surprised to note that two of them made for extremely tasty morsels, one tasting like a mixture of candy cotton and red apples, while the other one reminded you of roast beef and soup, somehow. Either way, good eating to be had, you gotta say.
You make sure both Phillip and Kiron are summoned before you proceed with today's itinerary... which mostly consists of having the former oversee your demon army as it prepares for the final push on what's left of humanity's armies stationed in the Border Fortress while the latter will be following you around for the sake of greater inspiration over the course of the day.
With that in mind, you have your sodliers cart the 'dead' cuties skitterlings (damnit, now she has you doing it, too) into the command room you've taken to conducting all your business in, ready to be used for practice and repaired, together with the non-destroyed ones.
And if Okita comes in midway through to take a seat and observe you as you work, nobody mentions it.
The day is spent patching up the holes and gashes inside your creations with the few human corpses you requisitioned, most of the actual damage located in or around the various tentacles, though one of the destroyed abominations is also missing half its tongue. Luckily enough, you have little issue replacing it, and before long, they're all active and raring to go again just in time for night to fall.