Things were moving quickly. Again! I suppose I should have known. I'd been looking forward to a period of rest and relaxation a little too much for it to actually happen.
Days were blurring together in a rush of things to do, confirm, and learn. I'll be honest here, I mostly focused on the latter. Figuring out details about our new assignment was a much better option than visiting bureaucrats, or interviewing people, or whatever other tasks Glaustro could come up with.
My greatest frustration was lack of time with Mia.
As two of Glaustro's four majors — majors! — neither of us was allowed to skive off. That meant the reluctant cat demoness was out and about on her own.
At least she was having fun? We didn't like talking about work when we finally got snatches of time together, but from what I'd been told, she was actually not working on any of the aforementioned tasks.
Oh no. My kitty cat was acting as a spy.
She had two primary targets: our most likely enemies, and our future underlings.
Glaustro had approved a massive recruitment wave, for obvious reasons, but the influx of people was making all of us nervous. We had enemies on every front and no set recruitment pools to draw from. Still, our upcoming assignment left us no choice.
Leading an invasion meant lots of new subordinates.
We'd done well enough on Breskwor, sure. Still, we technically lacked the numbers that would be expected of a proper invasion. Luck and bluster had carried us through.
For one thing, we'd been lucky that the local civilizations were… unrefined. Scattered. Incapable of acting together beyond the divine guidance of the goddess we killed. A proper world would have had much more advanced means of communication, allowing them to rally against us more efficiently.
They wouldn't have won. Still, it would have been much more annoying to kill or cow them all.
Another thing we'd gotten lucky on was the existence of the goddess herself. With such a clear power figure who carried most of the World Will's weight, all we'd had to do to claim ownership of the world was kill her.
The alternative was an absolutely agonizing slog of conquering and generally demonifying most of the planet until our 'claim' on it solidified. Large scale war, plenty of soldiers and officers who could stake their claims on the local cities, resources to feed and support them all…
Yeah. We'd gotten lucky on Breskwor. We couldn't expect anything like that same luck on our new assignment, especially with the 'mortal' factor in the mix.
I hadn't understood this before, but all of those issues were far, far more exaggerated when dealing with an army of mortals rather than demons. Demons didn't really require proper food, as long as we had souls and mana to nibble on. Plus, you could push a demonic army a hell of a lot harder than a mortal one.
Mortals? Without mana training, they grew tired easily. Wounds were a lot more crippling. Morale was forever going to be an issue if you forced them to massacre a ton of other mortals. And, most damningly, they needed appropriate rest facilities, a whole lot of food, breaks to, urgh, 'empty' themselves after eating…
Let me tell you, the one thing I would absolutely never miss about being mortal was the need to expel waste. Seriously. What's the point of eating if over ninety percent of what you put in your mouth comes out the other end?!
Anyway, I didn't want our army to die of dysentery or something. In fact, I wanted to have the highest mortal survival rates ever. Just because I found mortals a little gross now didn't mean my memories weren't fresh enough to sympathize with them.
It was wild, but it hadn't even been two and a half years since I'd joined up with the legion. Yet, here I was, a major and a Baron. I could only assume that a ton of demons would absolutely hate my guts if they knew how quickly I'd advanced.
Regardless, while Mia prowled around to spy on our enemies and new demonic subordinates, I devoted all my time to studying. The subjects of my studying? The world we'd be going to, of course, along with all the past rookie invasions I could find information about.
It was… both enlightening and supremely annoying to learn how other first-time invasions had been organized around the mortal recruits.
Some invasions had turned the mortals into meat grinders on purpose. Some had tried to organize battles and almost staged sieges in order to 'test' their mortal fodder. Some had literally just assigned them to demonic officers and let those officers figure things out.
It was all over the place.
I suppose that's why General Naberius had eventually stepped in and created a manual of specific guidelines for dealing with mortal recruits. The general mostly leaned into the whole 'testing' mentality, while also giving the sergeants in charge of the humans a lot more freedom than you'd expect. He wanted to test their inventiveness, too. If the sergeants did particularly well, they'd be praised, and their approach would be added to the manual.
The manual which we were denied access to on purpose.
I wish I could say it was some scheme by Vallinach or the other lieutenant generals, but it honestly wasn't. Oh no, this particular order came from the top. The big bad General Naberius himself had officially put out word that we were to be denied this particular resource. He'd also declared that anyone who helped us get it would be tortured and then executed by him personally.
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Why? Because for the first time in forever, Naberius would neither lead the recruit invasion himself nor hover over the shoulder of the person leading it for funsies. Because the whole thing was a clear test for Glaustro. Because he had to go and practically shout from the rooftops that he was grooming Glaustro as his successor.
So, instead of a proper invasion plan with notes, explanations, and guidelines, I got to slog through the ridiculous reports of past recruit invasions, right up until the general got involved again.
Then the reports cut off. Because of course we couldn't see something that might have ended up in his precious manual. The only reason I could even comment on his overall strategy a little was because I'd lived through the damn thing!
At least our logistics problems went away like a puff of smoke?
With the general taking a personal interest in Glaustro's affairs, the other elements of the legion were blessedly hesitant to outright antagonize us anymore. Even my asshole relatives had to back off and revert to subtler scheming. And by subtler, I mean better than declaring 'Oh, wow, I'm SO sorry, your entire invasion's worth of resources was misplaced!'
Small mercies.
Honestly? Even with all the crap I was going through, it was Bronwynn I pitied the most.
The poor guy was stuck with the most unenviable task of all: bureaucrat management. He was the one who had to go submit all the promotion requests and other endless forms. He was the one who had to sit through inane meetings with other legion officers, Torment merchants, and influential families. He was also the one who then had to analyze the whole mess and figure out how to proceed.
Apparently, recruit invasions were a big thing. Well, any invasion was. We just didn't get to see that when Naberius cut us off from all support and threw us onto Breskwor to test us and the other legion officers.
During a 'regular' invasion, you had to find merchants willing to get quickly assigned to newly conquered cities. You had to decide who to assign as governors of claimed territories. You had to wrangle demonic families interested in a getting a slice of the conquered territory for however long they could, preferably permanently (of course), so they could harvest souls and snatch up promising mortals. And, disgustingly enough, perform lots of experiments.
Then there were also patrons you could opt to work with, if you wanted resources in addition to what the legion itself would provide. Which was, according to Methialia, a pitifully anemic amount. Again, these mostly came in the form of influential, well-established families and merchants looking for some mortal resources. And by 'resources', I mean living mortals and their souls, obviously.
Bronwynn was managing for the most part. With lots of grumbling, sulking, and drinking, but he was managing.
My newly minted colonel, however, was on the verge of flipping out and killing someone.
Even if it was a much lighter workload, Glaustro had the unenviable job of dealing with the representatives of the lieutenant generals all by himself. (The only reason they were representatives, rather than the four butts themselves, was because said butts were trying to slight him.) The topic? Recruit assignments, officer choices, and stakes in the newly conquered world.
If the world was something the Legion of Torment decided to keep rather than scrap for layer growth, of course. The fate of Berlis was still fresh in my mind. Hard for it not to be, considering I'd actually witnessed a world crumbling into nothing so the Abyss could absorb it.
Anyway, Glaustro's days were a blur of drawn-out meetings where the reps squabbled, talked over each other, and mostly ignored Glaustro. The way my colonel put it was best: "They don't expect me to say no. They expect to argue just to annoy me, then hand me a list of demands and watch me grovel as I carry them out."
He had been impressively angry as he said that, eyes literally glowing with an inner flame. Then his lips had twisted into a rictus of smile, and he'd gone looking for Bronwynn.
When I later talked to the Affection demon, he sighed and told me Glaustro had tasked him with identifying potential sergeants among our new recruits. A message had also gone out to Imthala, whom we'd hopefully be seeing in person soon, to put together a list of people from our existing troops on Breskwor who could be promoted to the rank .
I saw where things were going, and I could only hope that Glaustro knew what he was doing. Being Naberius' favorite and pissing off the four lieutenant generals that way was one thing. Blowing them off entirely and claiming the whole proverbial pie for ourselves was another.
In spite of my fears, though, I couldn't really bring myself to disapprove. Not when Mia had already rooted out no fewer than sixteen groups of demons who were supposed to become plants within our ranks, waiting to cause trouble at the right moment.
Unfortunately, we weren't sure she could identify individuals.
We'd stuck our prospective recruits inside small compounds in the name of initial training, but we actually just wanted to see them interact with each other. Mia walked amongst them like a ghost, relying on her spells and mana affinity to eavesdrop, snoop, and generally be the best menace she could be.
This meant that so long as someone discussed their nefarious plans, she had a chance of catching on. For all the demons who chose to stick to themselves and brood, though? She had a much harder time identifying potential traitors among them. Oh, their Emotions gave away more than a few, but it wasn't a surefire thing.
Methialia did what she could to support Mia's task, of course. As the primary person in charge of recruitment, she put the prospective members of our army through hellish training to unbalance and exhaust them. She forced them into social situations. She stripped them temporarily of their belongings in the name of 'tests.'
Even then, I had no doubt that a traitor or two would slip past all the roadblocks we put in their way. But I was still immensely proud of Mia and all her progress.
About as much as I was frustrated with my own, actually.
In contrast to everyone who was making actual achievements, I was almost floundering with my task. The reports I had read were somewhat useful, sure, and I put all the most salient points together to present them to Glaustro. However, the main thing I was hoping to do to help us… didn't go so well.
And by 'the main thing', I mean researching the world we'd be invading.
Torgun, as our scouts found out the world was called, was a 'higher technology world', with 'significant population centers.' That's it. That's the most useful information I'd been able to extract from the reports the scouts submitted.
Because, for once, the stupid lieutenant generals won. The reports weren't riddled with holes, but I could tell where information had been edited out or glossed over.
I knew with absolute certainty it wasn't a high mana density world, both because recruits were being sent there and because the reports said so. I had readouts from the equipment they used to assess the world when they first infiltrated it, doing random teleportation lottery throughout the cosmos.
But the reports on the local culture? Actual descriptions of the cities and tech encountered? Zilch. Nothing. Nada!
I couldn't even get my hands on the scouts who'd encountered the world, in spite of having their names from the report, because they were 'on other assignments already and not in Torment.'
Read: 'We're not letting you meet them, idiot.'
So, I fretted. I fumed. And I felt useless.
It was in one such mood that I suddenly felt Mia's arms wrap around me, startling me out of the funk when she pressed her lips against my neck.
"Ready to visit Yules?" she purred, sending warmth and gratitude shooting through me.
We had called the armor smith over the weird shell communicators demons used, and let slip that our armor was totaled. She had ordered us to get our asses to her mother's shop that day.
Seeing as I was frustrated, and meeting Yules and her mother was always fun…
"Absolutely."