—Kronus, the High Councillor PoV—

"What… the… fuck…" I heard one of the adventurers below me say, and I couldn't help but agree. It was refreshing to see that even people as powerful as the Revolutioneers were flabbergasted by what we had just seen. We were still far from the action here, but that strange fire magic had at least illuminated the night a little. And all I wanted was to look away. It was horrific. All those bodies, and blood, and gore…

I felt bile rise from my throat, and the bitter taste came up to my mouth, but I managed to avoid outright puking. This time.

Some of my guards, and even the healer of The Revolutioneers, were not so lucky.

"Holy shit." Please excuse my language. But this was… What the fuck was Yoka thinking, reporting Haell as someone who could 'defeat a level 40 guard,' and 'create flames so hot that it hurt to be in the vicinity!?'

Yeah, she could do that. In the same way a dragon could stomp a horned bunny!!!

Really, truly, what the fuck?

"ACkK!?" I cried. The demon in question was suddenly right in front of us. I nearly fell from the tree, and my guards immediately tensed as if ready for battle. I was not big on fighting myself, but even I understood the futility of it. No, it was best to de-escalate the situation!

"H-Haell," I stammered, for which I grimaced. "Sorry… about them. They're just a little tense. There's still wicked miasma in the air, you see. But I saw your performance there, and uh, I'm very very impressed!"

"Okay," she said blandly. Her previously white armor had been dyed red like her skin. And I knew that the color came from the blood of her victims. I gulped. "So the city is finally mine?"

"I… I'll do my best to make it so!" I promised. I swore, I was going to… well, do something drastic if the council still decided to drag its feet. Dragons, why did I volunteer to see 'this Haell' for myself to 'see if she's really worth all that.' Now I was the one on the beast's sights!

Haell continued to stare at me with those terrifying eyes. I took a quick glance behind me, as if there could be anyone else there. My heart only hammered harder in my chest as the silence stretched on.

Finally, she spoke, and I almost deflated right then and there.

"Fine."

I heaved a sigh of relief once she left to be with her friends. Granuel, Moonwash, and a few guards and assassins of their own out in the open. I felt indignant shame at having acted so… so… submissively, to someone who was ostensibly just an adventurer. But, I quickly caught myself and made sure none of those feelings leaked through. I understood that she wielded far more power than any official position would allow. In both her popularity and sheer ability to wage war.

I must do everything I can to ensure her cooperation. A city is nothing in the face of that.

~~~

—Witney the Human Butcher PoV—

(As in a butcher who is human. Not someone who butchers humans.)

I scrunched my nose. My eyes watered, and I wanted to stick my cleaver in the guy beside me. Anyone. But I held myself back with all the willpower I had until it passed. I knew full well that this was only because of the miasma in the air. I was not usually a violent woman. But it was still so hard. I could barely stand it even this far. I didn't want to be the next person to snap and attack someone. The guards would stop us, but they had already messed up once and someone died. I didn't know what would happen to the guy that did it, only that he had been pulled away from the job.

Sloosh.

The blade of my cleaver sank into the goblin flesh with a familiar give. I refocused my attention on the gruesome task in front of me to distract from the other gruesome desires that may or may not be crawling around in my head. My job was to take the bones and the seeds and dump the rest. I should be more than used to this kind of work, but all the rotting flesh around us was really getting to me. Even with all my years of experience.

"Uggghhhhh…"

"How much more of these are there?"

"Shut up! The Haell Zharignan got rid of those goblins! It's the least we can do!"

"Lost a sister. And a brother. Mother. Two fathers… to those fuckers."

"Yeah…"

"That's rough, buddy."

"I don't care! This is too much. I'm leaving. Hey guard! Guard! Can you take me back to Eletite Village?"

"I'm afraid not, miss. The wagons would not be leaving for some time."

"But why!? You brought us. You bring us back."

"You agreed," a merchant came out and stressed, "to do a job here, despite all our warnings about all the goblins and miasma that might entail. We're not going to break schedule for you, and you'll face further penalties to your pay if you do not do the work you agreed to."

"What? You can't do that! This area has been carved dry by the horde! There's nothing to hunt!"

"And if you keep working, then you won't face a penalty and you'll earn the full amount."

"But that's… Well… fine."

I tuned out the rest of everyone's prattling as I continued my work. It would go by faster if they didn't waste time. I didn't wish to stay here any more than necessary either.

I looked up when I heard the sound of approaching wagons. The smell got so much worse as they approached, and then even more so when they stopped and the adventurers dumped out a the rotting carcasses inside.

A new mound of flea-infested goblin corpses was left strewn on the ground as both the wagons and adventurers went back deeper into the miasma to grab more.

…Our workload was not decreasing.

~~~

—Back to Haell PoV—

I sat in a bloody clearing. It was what my war against the goblins had made, only now it was much diminished. The bodies that had once piled like putrid rolling hills in this place had shrunk under my fire, succumbed to the rot, and been hauled by the teams of adventurers and wagons. They needed to move the bodies, because the people Granuel and Kronus had hired from the nearby settlements were too weak to handle the level of miasma here. There weren't even that many people we could hire, because entire towns and villages had already fallen, and those we could reach had still suffered severe losses against the constant raids.

A body suddenly twitched in the distance, and I shot a dart of curse at the newborn goblin to kill it quickly before I went back to my business. I focused my curse magic on a pile of flesh in front of me, and willed it to morph into a different shape. All I accomplished was to hasten the rot and dismember the meat further. The latter was an application of what I wanted to do, biomancy itself, but maybe curse was never meant to be bent into this shape.

I looked beside me at Moonwash who was trying to accomplish the same thing. She held her new staff in both hands, now made to handle curse magic in its entirety and full of my blood within its hollow insides. Its handle was entirely made of goblin seeds, and that was the only thing that had to be added yesterday to her ready-made framework. My girlfriend had stalled on the design, only because she decided that she wanted only the best and most highest-level seeds to use, and I delivered. She focused her own curse magic, the slab of goblin meat pulsed, and then it started to elongate until it went completely out of control and turned into bloody spaghetti!

She looked at me, and I looked at her.

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"It's a start?" I tried.

"Yeah," she agreed.

Emboldened by some measure of success, or at least a very very very very crude and unreliable proof of concept, I grabbed another goblin and proceeded to try and shape it into the kind of arm I wanted. Cursifix could make an entire species with his dying breath; Surely we could make a single fucking limb!

~~~

—Pradley the Human Adventurer POV—

"Is that…?"

"I think so."

"Oh angels, I can see the bones!"

"What has this world come to…"

"We should move out! I'm a mage! I can feel it clearly! There's miasma in the air!"

Everyone else on the road left, but I did not turn away from the wagons that carried the slight aura of curse. It was a heretical element to ever use, the same used to kill so many of our holy angels, and now it was just being paraded around in the open. It clogged the main central road, where traffic had to be diverted nearly an hour in advance. They disturbed the peace and business of so many people just to deliver all these cursed materials to the very demon who had ruined this entire city.

I followed them just to make sure, and sure enough, there was Haell Zharignan in front of Duke Astro's manor, smiling like a madwoman as she received her terrible bounty. She had taken claim of the complex that should have never been hers. It belonged to the shepherds meant to lead us all. It was to be my place of work once I had passed their testing to become a templar. I'd gotten a recommendation, damn it! But that had all halted once Duke Astro had become bedridden. I was sure that was her fault, too. And now I could never pick up my life where I left off, because Haell had killed everyone, and everyone was dead. I barely escaped the purge that followed, of all the brave soldiers and adventurers who had fought against those barbarians.

The demon's eyes of boundless evil met my own, and I bolted.

~~~

—Haell Again PoV—

"I saw a suspicious person earlier," I told Granuel after he was done briefing me on the progress of our plan to take over the city. And the answer was that talks had not progressed much at all, beyond Kronus' many promises. He still had to get back to the capital City of Unity before any of that could be put into any practical action. But at least I was sure that he was a lot more eager now than before.

"That's basically everyone," Granuel replied, taking a quick sip of his tea. We were currently somewhere in the right wing building of Pandemonium, at an office he had claimed for himself, though my friend still preferred to do most of his work elsewhere. At least shit was kept clean with hellfire where applicable, and with curse for the more troublesome furniture present. A lot of the non-Pandemonium things they'd brought in had been reinforced by Moonwash to last, sometimes even made from cursed materials themselves. Cursetaceans had become a lot more numerous lately.

"Yes, but this one's different. Trust me. I know hate when I see it."

"I'll give you that. But that's still everyone. You're very hated."

"And I'll give you that too." Oh how generous we both were. "But he was watching the wagons come in while glaring hatefully earlier."

"...Still a lot of people."

"And I'm saying that he has more hate than even them, when I'm already so widely hated, as you so aptly put it."

"...Okay, you're right."

"Yeah," I nodded and leaned back on the couch. This tea made from the rare hydraminta leaf was delicious. "Can you take him out in secret?"

"What?"

"I mean kill him. But without letting anyone find out."

"What!?" he shouted, then immediately recoiled back when my expression changed and the very room we sat upon tilted. "Haell… you can't just kill people without cause!"

"But there is a cause. He's a threat, and he's already tipped his hand that he's planning something."

"He looked at you funny. That is most certainly not an offense."

I narrowed my evil eyes. "It's not about just looking at me funny, Granuel. People have made ruder gestures, you know that. This just felt a bit more dangerous. He's well into the level 30s. And it's you guys I'm worried about. I'm confident I can take whatever he has to throw at me… although that overconfidence can also be fatal. I've certainly experienced that. But you see now why I wanted to kick everyone out of the city? It's so hard to have enemies hiding everywhere the moment we step foot outside!"

"...I get that." He thought for a long moment. "We're… at least completely safe inside Pandemonium. And even if the city wasn't there, we'll eventually have to leave for a city someday. You can't protect us forever. And I can't just have people die without cause. I'll send people to watch and investigate this guy you've talked about, but I won't just have someone killed when they haven't done anything yet. I'm also thinking about having guard details permanently assigned to us outside…?"

"Fine." I sighed. "I'm… I just find it so grating to have a known possible threat, and not do anything about it. And now we need to have guards to walk around our city? I would hate having to have escorts with me everywhere."

"Well, you don't need it," he stated the obvious. "It's unfortunate for Angerly and Berry, but I doubt Moonwash would care either?"

"...She won't, yeah." I agreed. She'd probably welcome more people to carry her shit.

"Besides. I'm more thinking assassins shadowing their every move, if I have the people. People won't notice a thing."

"...And is that safe? Can we trust them?"

He looked me in the eye. "I vet them properly."

"You mean like we did Therick?"

"Haell…" he sighed. "There's always a chance. But you have to take a chance at some point. We gotta live a little!"

I glared. "But if something happens with them, Granuel…"

"I know, I know. I'll do my best, okay? And if my failure means your ire and…" he looked away, almost ready to tear up, and a little afraid.

"Hey… Fuck. That's my fault. I'm a fucking asshole." I heaved another sigh and fully deflated, schooling the threatening visage my face had taken into something more neutral, perhaps even caring. "I didn't mean it that way, Granuel, okay? I just… I just worry. I know you're trying you're best. And if that isn't enough, then I'm not going to kill you. I will not harm you in any way. I'll just…" I looked outside.

Kill whoever did it.

I did not voice those next words, because I wasn't sure it would be limited to 'whoever did it.'

~~~

"Where can I do that?" I asked after Grandpa finished talking about how he'd killed a guradon. It was a very short-limbed, fat, almost slug-shaped mammal monster that possessed such dense flesh that even Grandpa struggled to get through it. "I think I'm ready! I can take it on!"

"Are you…" Dad began, but thought better of it. "No. You can definitely pull it off. But you can still… get hurt. Be careful, okay?"

"Of course, Dad."

"It's just in the Gravitas Wonderzone," Grandpa finally got to say. "Which isn't very far at all! You should go. It's very beautiful. Though, well, I have lost my collection of the place now…"

"Sorry about that," I shrugged.

"It's not to say that it's your fault!" Grandpa quickly amended. "Rescuing you was totally worth it. Not just because I love you, but also because everything here is so cool! More so than any place

"Okay," I simply replied and kept eating. Other than my family, only Moonwash and Granuel were here for our dinner. I considered the Gravitas Wonderzone a bit more as I savored the taste of fried lavox. The wonderzone was in the Edengar portion of the rainforest, and I wasn't sure if it was the wisest, even for me, to just go gallivanting into enemy territory by myself right now.

"Come to think of it, why don't the angels attack? Just in general, but haven't I caused a great enough disturbance here? Surely I'm more of a priority than protecting their sad coastal territories right?"

"Not if there's even more cursetaceans now," Granuel replied in between sips of soup. "They've been getting more active recently, and especially since, well… around half a year ago."

"Exactly when I broke free." I nodded with satisfaction.

"Yes."

"Good. I'm happy to be causing problems for them. Although I uh, shouldn't be for all the regular people caught in the crossfire. I know the crustecars want no part of this and are being forced, without even mentioning the inhex… But it still doesn't seem like enough, you know? The angels can do so much. Why are they sidelined so hard?"

"Because if they make too much noise, then the hero-ranks of the other factions backing New Grandera, or even the elves, might make themselves known," Grandpa was the one to answer.

I raised a brow. "I thought New Grandera didn't have anyone that's crossed into level 80. One of their councillors told me that."

"And that's true," he nodded after a sip of beer. "But the harpies and the dwarves in the mountains absolutely have some. And the angels and Edengar as a whole would rather not have them be involved, especially considering that so many more peaks are supporting New Grandera than we ever got around to attacking."

"Huh. Wait hang on. If this becomes an independent territory, then doesn't that make this more vulnerable to that?"

"Shit. I didn't think of that," Granuel dropped his fork in horror. "But there's no formal treaty stating so! Their elites aren't actually obligated to help us."

I too felt a measure of fear, but it was quickly drowned out by shame and rage. If the angels came, then I would simply have to kill them. I had already beaten my grandfather in single combat. And while I knew that an angel was even stronger than him, Pandemonium was here. They would be in for a very rude awakening if they ever dared to attack me in my own home. And I was only at the beginning of the gold ranks. I could only get stronger from here.

"Not officially, perhaps," Grandpa supplied while I seethed. "But the dwarves and the harpies have invested so much into this project. Edengar has seen reason to believe that they would intervene, at least."

"Then maybe that protection would be extended to us too...?"

"Maybe," I interjected, "but I wouldn't count on it. Get the city, I have no intention of going back on my word. Talk to the dwarves and harpies. This is such a unique place, that I'm sure they'd love to have a look. Hell, invite the crustecars too. Let's give them a stake in this place and make the population a bit more lively than now." I tapped my fingers on the table. "And find Elfrafim. I have no idea where she is, but I'm sure she'll come running once she hears about everything that's happened here."

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