The Fiend's Creation System

The Unfortunate Outcome

“...And that was the last thing I remembered before the earth underneath us ruptured and knocked me out…” An injured Lilias with a pale complexion and lifeless look on her face said.

Lilias had a recording of her and her husband’s battle against the former Holy Knight, Sammael, and the fiends saved within a scryer sphere. She had just finished showing the recording to the light alliance’s congregation after she had awoken from her coma.

This was a few weeks after the events shown within the scryer sphere had transpired and the human forces have long since retreated from the Shifting Hallows and even from the Redgrove Region.

The total losses surmounted to over two-thirds of the people they had sent out largely due to the trap the Fiends had prepared for them after they entered their lands and the hidden one they sprung when the army had returned to Redgrove City.

The entire Redgrove Region was within the Fiends’ domain and the citizens of Redgrove quickly turned on them when the army had entered its gates and only a few were able to survive and escape the city. 

As for the ones that had remained behind because they were too sick to go on the expedition into the Shifting Hallows, they all experienced the same fate as those that had entered the hallows and either died or turned into fiends.

This was something the people who had survived were able to relay to the Light Alliance’s congregation, the Fiends had the ability to somehow turn their people into them. It was an unfounded and terrifying ability since no one knew how it happened and for those unlucky, they’d turn into fiends. 

As for the lucky ones, they’d simply just die on the spot. Both of the outcomes weren’t auspicious in any sense but in the humans’ eyes, it was much better to die as a human than to turn into a fiend and join the ranks of their enemies.

Of course, when they thought about the words that Dark Fiend Sammael, the ‘traitor’ who turned his back on humanity in favor of the fiends, had said, they had to think twice again about their stance against the fiends.

It was true until now that the fiends had done nothing wrong and they had only once gone to war against them only because they were helping their allies, the dwarves. If the war against the dwarves didn’t happen, no one would know about the fiends’ existence and their occupation of the Shifting Hallows.

They’d be obscured from the world and no one would even know of them. The ones that caused them to surface, in a sense, were the church that ostracized and attacked the dwarves.

The Light Alliance had lost a lot of good men and women in this campaign. There were even champions who had fallen in battle or gone missing. One of which was Lilias’s husband and cultivation partner, Walter.

She was despondent and out of sorts because she had lost her husband on the day when they were attacked by Sammael and the fiends. They had selflessly stayed back to fend off the fiends from pursuing the army, but it all didn’t matter since they were still just retreating into enemy territory.

Lilias had been knocked unconscious when the Earth had ruptured from underneath her and her husband when they were getting ready to retreat from the battlefield. When she woke up, she was on a stretcher pulled by a pale-faced Heather and a one-armed Charlie who were leading the remnants of their army out of the Redgrove Region.

Another one of the missing champions was their army’s high commander, General Florence Atna, who was supposedly attacked and captured by Sammael and another female fiend named Aria.

Throughout the entire battle, not once did the Fiend Lord, Julius, appear. The human forces and champions had only caught a glimpse of him during the initial start of the battle when the fiends had all caught up to them and he initiated the simultaneous and spontaneous deaths and transformations of thousands.

Just a single word from the Fiend Lord caused their soldiers to die on the spot or transform into Fiends. This ability was definitely ghastly, but from the information, the humans had gathered and the on-site reports they received from the witnesses that were close by to those that had transformed or died, the Light Alliance’s strongest minds were able to accurately deduce the reason why they had died or transformed, though, to them, it was just speculation.

“Thank you, Champion Lilias… we don’t know what’s become of your husband, but we’ll do all we can to search for him and bring him back.”

“...Thank you.”

Lilias bowed and exited the large conference hall within the Light Alliance’s headquarters. She didn’t have a hopeful look on her face since the only thing Lilias could think of was the worst.

Her husband probably wasn’t killed but had turned into a fiend, much like Sammael. She already knew about the transformative powers the fiends held and since Sammael, a powerful champion who was once on the humans’ side was able to become a champion that was now siding with the fiends...this was the only outcome she could think of.

If not, then her husband was probably dead. However, she hoped that the latter was true and not the former. Lilias would rather find out that her husband was dead than be on the enemy’s side.

Back in the conference hall, the leaders of every human nation and power had solemn looks on their faces as they continued their discussion regarding the fiends. From the scryer sphere footage shown by Lilias earlier, the transformed Sammael stated that they supposedly weren’t an enemy of humanity.

All signs regarding the fiends up until now also pointed in that direction since they didn’t completely eradicate the humans in the battle of Aurum Valley which spelled the most tragic loss to the humans in recent times.

They fought only to defend their allies and if they had always been living in the Shifting Hallows, this was the only time in centuries that they’ve ever shown themselves. No one knew the truth behind the fiends and how long they had been living within the Shifting Hallows, but one thing was for certain, if the fiends wanted to attack them, they wouldn’t have needed to wait for the humans to first come to provoke them as they did just now.

The fiends could have also completely obliterated the joint army and continued chasing after them but they didn’t. Instead, they stopped their pursuit once the army had retreated out of the Redgrove Region.

Of course, the complete takeover of the Redgrove Region that belonged to the Hemox Kingdom was another matter that they had to attend to but the Hemox Kingdom was not even a Kingdom, to begin with.

It was just a barbaric land where some fool decided to declare himself king and the lands he ‘conquered’ as his domain. It was a power that wasn’t even fit to be acknowledged as a kingdom since the governmental structure was still in its developing stages.

They weren’t even formally a part of the Light Alliance and it was only because they were a human kingdom that the Hemox Kingdom was ‘automatically’ inducted into the Light Alliance.

Hemox was just a backwater country that held no consequence to the Light Alliance’s major contributors. The only thing they had going on was the Port City of Luno that connected the southern part of the continent with the rest of the continent.

“Regarding the issue with the Redgrove Region and the Hemox Kingdom…”

“We’ll overlook that. The fiends have already taken over the goddamn region and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yes, I agree with this. All in favor?”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

A majority of the leaders present agreed to overlook this slight transgression and moved on with the discussions.

“Now, let’s continue with the discussion. The fiends’ ability to transform people into fiends or kill them with just a word… how do we make of this?” The Nation Leader that had been directing the discussions asked.

“Our magicians, physicians, and mystics have all pooled together and the conclusion they arrived at all lay within this.”

One of the leaders stood up and placed a small jar of red mist onto the round conference table. He slid the jar to the middle of the table and when it got to the center, it suddenly began to float into the air, giving the other national leaders a better look at the contents.

“A red mist?”

“It’s not mist, but miasma. The color is unique, but it’s the color of the mana or energy that the fiends use.”

“And how do you know this?”

“We acquired multiple recordings of the fiends when they attacked the army. A characteristic that we saw was the constant red-colored lightning or aura that appeared whenever they used a spell or a skill.”

“...What’s the correlation with that and this red miasma?”

“This red miasma is the cause of our soldiers’ transformation and sudden deaths.”

“?”

“How?”

The one who was talking was the president of the human’s Magic Kingdom, Rowan Celkin.

“Magic President Rowan, what do you mean?”

“We were able to extract this red miasma from the bodies of the people who were killed on the battlefield or had transformed into fiends.”

He snapped his fingers and a large cubic screen popped up in the middle of the table. It showed footage of the extraction process and the experiments they did with the red miasma. 

“To humans, this miasma will initially cause sickness but if left to fester, it will slowly change their bodies. The end of the transformation is obviously a fiend but if one is not compatible, they will just end up dead instead.”

“...You were able to acquire this information in just a short time?”

“Please, I am the President of the Magic Kingdom. Do you really think something as interesting―I mean, as worrying―as this wouldn’t take priority to research? I put a halt to 10 different labs and pulled into 15 teams of our best―”

“Alright, that’s enough! So what you’re saying is conclusive based on all of the information and experiments you and your people conducted?”

“...Yes. This red miasma, or let’s just call it, Fiend Energy, is quite fascinating. It’s like a virus but yet it isn’t. It changes a creature’s body into a fiend’s―and this works on everything, a human, a monster, an animal! Heck, even a tree can actually turn into a fiend!”

“....”

“Anything ‘living’ can be changed into a fiend using this energy. This may sound bad but hear me out. The initial phase causes disease to fester inside the body like a cancer but it’s only because the fiend energy is pushing out the hidden viruses and harmful bacteria so it manifests as sickness, however…”

“However?”

Everyone was interested in what the Magic President was saying. They found out about the fiends’ ability to transform living beings into their own kind and how to kill them without even fighting so they were naturally interested in what else they found out about it.

“The changes that happen pre-transformation are quite something. A boosted metabolism, a strengthened immune system, the physical aspects of the creature is boosted within a short period of time to accommodate for the fiendish transformation.”

“...This pre-transformation effects… Can we make use of it?”

“We certainly can!” Rowan exclaimed excitedly.

“If given a proper dosage of this Fiend Energy, we can―in a short time―boost the physical abilities of all our soldiers to the point where it can rival that of a demon’s physique! It’s unbelievable but it’s possible! However, we have to be careful about the dosage since the Fiend Energy doesn’t disappear and can’t be refined by our human bodies. Too much will initiate the Fiend Transformation but even a little is enough to evoke the pre-transformation effects.”

Rowan’s report on his research of the fiend’s plasm was thought-provoking and it opened up some ‘opportunities’ that the national leaders would definitely exploit. The national leader who was directing the discussions quickly spoke up and said,

“...It sounds dangerous but continue doing your research on this Fiend Energy. It’ll help us uncover the mysteries behind our foe. For now, we should not antagonize the fiends but keep them under surveillance.”

“What of the Church? We did not invite the Pope or any of the ArchBishops to this meeting… How will they respond to this?”

“And what’s there for us to care about?”

“What?”

“We sent our armies to attack the fiends and even some of our countries’ champions. Many were injured, killed, or lost in that campaign while the church? What did they lose? A company of priests and paladins, but did they lose a Champion-level figure?”

“...No.”

“Exactly.”

The leader who was directing the discussion was Corvus Ingroff, Supreme Leader of the Holstead Battlefront, an archipelago Kingdom off the shore of the Harrdigor Continent.

This archipelago was vast and it was the main battlefront between the light and dark faction. Originally, it wasn’t an archipelago, but the terrain had changed into what it was at present after centuries of battle.

Corvus Ingroff was one of the few Light Alliance leaders that weren’t happy with the Holy Light Church interfering and holding influence within the Light Alliance. He specifically didn’t invite them in this discussion because while every other faction’s champions had been injured or killed, the Church hadn’t dispatched any champion-level figure so they didn’t lose as much as the rest.

“They’re just a religion and they didn’t even dispatch a holy knight or an archbishop. They have no say in our stance against the fiends...unless some of you guys want to dispatch an additional force to attack them and suffer another miserable defeat?”

“...”

“...”

“Until we figure out how to safely traverse through the lands of red miasma, we’ll only be sending our soldiers to their deaths.”