Gains
2221 Words
After receiving the good news from Eisha, Julius immediately began retreating. He and his forces had pushed very deep into the enemy’s formation. Although the soldiers had become scattered thanks to him toppling over a few trees and his homunculi further wreaking havoc on their ranks, he didn’t want to overextend himself.
His transformation was almost over and it would be bad if he lost his strength while he was in the middle of the enemy’s ranks. Eisha was also coming over to meet with him so he could just wait for her before they resumed their attack.
Once Julius retreated to a safe distance, he noticed that the humans didn’t pursue him. He frowned when he saw them quickly retreat and scoffed, “Hah, so they abandoned their commander. What a joke.”
Julius had a sneer on his face when he thought about their selfish and greedy nature. He had long since noticed that some of the soldiers in the human army weren’t even proper ones.
He deduced that they were either conscripted into the army or were just hired men without any proper training. They were either forced to be here or were paid to be here. After receiving news that their commander had been kidnapped by the enemy, they immediately began retreating without even thinking about it.
Of course, Julius had already heard that the army’s commander had issued the retreat, but to think that after he had been kidnapped, instead of going after the pursuer and rescuing him, they just abandoned him and continued following his orders.
It was truly laughable. He inevitably roared in laughter and mocked them.
“Cowards, stupid human cowards!”
Julius immediately ordered his homunculi to pursue them. He wasn’t going to waste this opportunity when his enemies had their backs turned on him.
[Level: 1 (188/1000)]
He still needed to personally kill a lot more creatures before he could level up. His homunculi and Eisha could help stack his kill counter but the amount needed was 100 times more than if he did it personally.
Well, it couldn’t be helped. If it was that easy for him to level up, he’d probably already be on his way to conquering the world by now. Thankfully, his stats could rise without the need for his leveling rising.
It wasn’t like Eisha and his other homunculi units. They leveled up differently than he did. Right now, Eisha was already level 5 and her attributes had risen by quite a bit. Even though they were still rank C, the numerical grade of her stats had noticeably risen.
If he viewed his subordinates’ status screens, Julius had the option of switching from an alphabetical grade to a numerical grade.
The alphabetical grade displayed only a rough outline of his units’ stats while the numerical grade showed the exact number.
[Status
Name: Eisha de Ephalerith
Race: Fiend
Class: Queen of Fiends
Level: 5 (780/5000)
STR: 52 (C+)
AGI: 58 (C++)
INT: 76 (B+)
Skills: [Quick Step C], [Frenzy D+], [Fiend’s Eye S]
Additions: [Fiend’s Zeal], [Metamorphosis]
Condition: Healthy
]
His wife was doing good while he…
[Status
Name: Julius de Ephalerith
Race: Fiend
Class: Creator
Level: 1 (188/1000)
STR: 40 (C-)
AGI: 35 (D+)
INT: 80 (B+)
Skill: [Creation EX], [Pinnacle Mental Resistance A]
Addition: [Creation EX], [Parallel Cognition]
Condition: Healthy
]
Well, he was getting there. His stats rose whenever he trained his body or if something drastic happened to him and he persevered through it.
Eisha could do the same but it was more direct for her if she leveled up. She had such high stats because as a human, her foundation was good and now that she had converted into a Fiend, the stats just multiplied.
The system informed him that Eisha was still in her growth phase which was typically between level 1-10. Her stats would grow quickly but after that level, her stats wouldn’t experience any drastic changes. Only her skills would continue to rise as her level went up.
Leveling up would also net her some new skills in the future unlike Julius, but Julius didn’t need to acquire a skill when he could ‘create’ it with his [Creation EX] skill as long as one of his subordinates had it.
There was a limit to how many ‘created’ skills he could make so Julius made sure to select only the most useful ones. Eisha’s Metamorphosis skill was naturally one of these very useful skills.
His [Generate Weapon] and [Generate Spell] skills under [Creation EX] were already used so he couldn't create new weapons or spells. He was stuck with his bow and Wind Arrow.
It would be too much of a convenience for these two skills to have no restrictions placed on them. Julius didn’t think it was unfair or anything. His creation ability was already overpowered in the first place.
Once Eisha regrouped with Julius, the two led Julius’s team of homunculi to pursue the monsters. Their Metamorphosis had already expired so they couldn’t act recklessly anymore.
They played it safe and only killed a few stragglers or some squads that were, unfortunately, a little too slow in their retreat. With their backs turned on them, Julius and Eisha continued to reap the lives of the human soldiers until they chased them out of the elven forest.
They didn’t give chase since Julius didn’t know what was out there. The forest wreaked with the smell of blood as a long trail of corpses was left behind by the human army thanks to Julius and his homunculi.
Julius ordered his homunculi to begin gathering up the corpses into one place. The elves were a little repulsed by the m******e. They had achieved an overwhelming victory so they celebrated a little.
After the armor, weapons, and other miscellaneous objects were stripped from the corpses, Julius had the homunculi bring them back to their Fiend’s Sanctum along with 30 percent of the spoils they got from this battle.
Julius noticed that Elder Vysin was still busy taking care of the captured army commander and a few other people.
“Heh, so he wasn’t entirely abandoned after all,” Julius derisively said.
He turned around and was about to leave, but he heard someone calling out to him.
“You! You’re a fellow human! Why would you do this?!”
Julius turned around and stared back at the pig-like human who was groveling on the ground.
He looked around before asking, “What’s this pig talking about now?”
“P-Pig? Listen here! You look strong enough, I’ll pay you! I’m the city lord and I’ll pay you! I’ll give you land and a title! Just save me from these elves!”
“Huh?”
“I’ll pay you 10 times more than what these bastards can pay! If it weren’t for you, these elves wouldn’t have stood a chance against me!”
Julius only listened and chuckled. He turned to Elder Vysin and said, “Are you really just going to let that slide, Elder Vysin?”
Vysin’s frown deepened and he asked, “What do you mean?”
“He just belittled your entire race, are you just going to let him run his mouth?”
“...”
“I would have killed him. Since he’s the city lord, he’s definitely the one behind all the troubles your people have been facing. Didn’t he also kidnap one of your Elder’s daughters or something?”
“Yes, that’s why we didn’t kill him.”
“Well, I guess he still holds some merit. Just use him as a human shield and storm the city. Release your people and then kill him. It’s better to eliminate a problem at its roots and set an example for any would-be offenders,” Julius replied.
Vysin contemplated on his words for a bit while Viktor paled at them.
“Why would you do this to your fellow human?! And for a lesser race like th―GIIHHHHH!!!”
Eisha suddenly appeared before Viktor and stamped on his head. She crushed the fat man’s head into the ground and began grinding her foot on his skull.
“You’ve been disrespectful to my Prince for quite some time now you disgusting pig,” Eisha venomously said.
“Eisha, that’s enough. You’re going to kill him.”
“...Hmph, consider yourself lucky.”
Eisha stepped off and retreated to Julius’s side. Julius turned towards Vysin and said, “Elder Vysin, we’ve helped you elves in this campaign. I hope you can return and give us a good word with your Grand Elder. I hope our two races will have a long and cooperative relationship.”
Julius proceeded to leave the blood-drenched forest. Along the way, he and Eisha picked a few herbs and berries while also hunting a few normal animals. It had been so long since they’ve actually seen something ‘normal’ ever since they were stuck in the barren Shifting Hallows.
After arriving back at their home, Julius was greeted with many notifications.
[+5,000 Flesh]
[+10,000 Blood]
[+1,000 Food]
[+500 Ore]
[+1,000 Stone]
[+...]
[+...]
[Evolution Tree Unlocked]
[+5 New Evolution Entries]
[Incendiary Homunculus Unlocked]
[Pyro Homunculus Unlocked]
[Hydro Homunculus Unlocked]
[Aero Homunculus Unlocked]
[... Unlocked]
[...]
[...]
“Hmm, we’ve harvested quite a bit from this short outing,” Julius said out loud.
He looked at the newly evolved homunculi and checked their statuses and skills. They were all part of Eisha’s retinue so Julius was glad that she had a little bit of extra protection.
He couldn’t wait to see what would happen once he put them through the Fiend’s Dwelling once it was complete and transformed them into proper battle-oriented fiends.
Eisha was tallying their gains for today and nodded in agreement to Julius’s words. “Mhm, we’ve established relations with the local elves and we now know that there’s a human city nearby. We can probably go and trade with them as well.”
Eisha’s words held merit and Julius thought it was also good. They didn’t need to treat the humans negatively or any other race for that matter unless they were hostile towards them.
However, with his previous experience, Julius bet that the humans would be the first to turn on them once they found out that they were Fiends. It was a common known fact that humans were the most abundant species on the planet and because of this, they felt a little superior to the other races.
It couldn’t be helped because even Julius felt like that before. There were a few different race servants in his Empire’s castle and deep inside, he looked down on them to some extent.
Of course, now, he didn’t care. The system was influencing his sense of values and characters so he was rather indifferent to many things unlike before. The only thing that truly mattered to him was Eisha, his Fiends, and the overarching objective that was slowly being firmly implanted into his soul.
Julius had long since felt that the collective consciousness of his race was slowly influencing his thoughts, nature, and actions. Earlier when he was ‘hunting’ the humans, he felt pleasure in reaping their lives.
It wasn’t only him, but Julius also noticed that Eisha’s nature was slowly changing as well. He didn’t know what would happen if his connection with the system became too deep. Would he become integrated into the Fiends’ collective consciousness and lose himself in it? Or would something else happen?
Julius shook himself out of this train of thoughts. It was dangerous since it could dampen his motivation and questioning the collective consciousness was like questioning his very being since he was a part of them already.
His anchor―which was his wife, Eisha―was the one thing that Julius felt that could keep his sense of self from being too influenced by the Fiend’s collective consciousness.
The hive mind of his race worked both ways so while he gave his homunculi orders, he could feel their emotions and thoughts transfer back to him and because there were many of them, he sometimes couldn’t help but feel that his sense of self was slowly diminishing.
Thankfully, Eisha was there to root his ‘soul’ in place so he was able to continue being ‘himself’. Julius just didn’t know how long he could last and what kind of consequences would happen if he did lose his sense of self.
- Writer
