The perspective a typical demon held when assessing a mortal was almost never flattering. Unless the mortal in question was supremely talented and amusing to boot, they'd be dismissed as a 'resource', at best.
Now, I wasn't a typical demon. My ascension came too early for me to lose every last dreg of positive feeling towards mortal kind. That did not, however, mean that I was some kind of saint.
No, when faced with the potential of an entire world getting blown up from under me, my first question was how many people I had to kill to prevent that.
Unfortunately, the answer was too goddamned many.
With humanity mostly united under corporate overlords, power had slipped entirely from the hands of the people and into the hands of the most wealthy. Technically, the Federation had a President and a Parliament that decided its fate. Practically? The entire dirt rock was ruled by twenty-nine CEOs of megacorps. And all twenty-nine were caught up in constant politicking, assassination attempts, struggles to hold onto power, and funding shady research in the hopes of achieving some kind of immortality.
If we killed one of them, things wouldn't be so bad. If we killed three, people would start to wonder. If we took out more than half of them… war would break out faster than I could sneeze. Nuclear war.
So, we were going to have to be patient. We would need to properly position our people and only strike once we were guaranteed an instant success.
The things I did for Glaustro.
Really, the deeper I dove into what these particular mortal chucklefucks were ready to do to secure their eternal reign, the more I thought we were doing the world a favor by conquering it.
Why did I think that? Well, our ability to devour souls led us through a string of stealthy murders and discoveries. Three days after we stepped through the portal, I was standing with Mia and a team of fifty handpicked demons in a massive underground lab complex.
It was not a pleasant place to be.
"This is just… disturbing."
I stared at the line of pods in front of us. Each contained a person interred within some kind of nourishing liquid. The people didn't even have masks on. They were just floating there, probably absorbing oxygen through their skin from whatever the liquid was.
"I didn't know mortals could stoop this low," Mia agreed, a much more disgusted expression lingering on her face. "I thought this kind of thing was our preference."
My lips twitched into a half-smile for the first time in the three days we'd spent going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Really, I couldn't blame her.
We'd passed rooms full of tortured, surgically-taken-apart humans. We'd passed rooms with living specimens whose organs were all opened up to the air, constantly getting poked, prodded, and pumped full of various drugs. We'd passed rooms with even worse sights, but I decided not to think about those.
The entire thing had culminated in our discovery of the most successful test subjects: the twelve bodies bobbing up and down in their liquid prisons. Humans injected with just the right combo of chemicals and DNA treatments to grant them healing abilities almost on par with a demon.
The researchers were still trying to stabilize these subjects and turn them effectively ageless, of course. But they'd managed to take a surprisingly large step in the 'right' direction.
"What should we do with them?" Mia wondered, idly trailing her claws over one of the containers.
"Hmmm… Rescue them, and then stick them with Glaustro? I have no clue how what was done to them would interact with demonic ascension, but… can never have enough mortal soldiers, right?"
"True."
And so their fate was sealed.
We hadn't intended to rescue them, really. We were only there because we'd caught wind of research being performed jointly by a ton of megacorps. But a few extra recruits couldn't hurt.
Suddenly, a demon materialized out of a nearby patch of shadows and held out a soul crystal towards me.
"Sir, here is the information your requested."
I threw the crystal into my mouth without hesitation, noting that a second soul was being offered to Mia.
Knowledge instantly shot through my mind, which devoured and dissected it in record time. A small smile twisted my lips.
We had finally found our perfect target.
The entire Earth we currently stood on (because yes, some worlds were as unimaginative with names as my old one once was) might have been 'brought together' by the formation of the Federation. Did that mean wars were a thing of the past?
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Of course not.
Several poor areas of the world were left practically ungoverned. Aggression, lawlessness, and crime reigned supreme. Multiple megacorps kept swooping in to 'pacify' these locations, engaging in what were basically war games emulating larger scale warfare.
In other words, the megacorps were 'wisely' containing their conflicts to these areas.
Areas like the city of Bredingshire.
Bredingshire contained around eight million souls mired in misery, poverty, and constant struggle for survival. It was out of the way, rarely reported on, and had reps from no fewer than twelve megacorps all waging a shadow war with each other within its confines. That meant it had a lot of souls for the taking, a ton of armed and dangerous individuals, and some actual, military-grade encampments in and around the city.
It wouldn't fold immediately in the face of a demonic army. Well, an army of mortal recruits working for demons. But neither would it be an insurmountable obstacle.
Most importantly, we could cut off communications to it, kill everyone, and then fake transmissions for a while so the outside world wouldn't immediately notice what had happened.
Mia and I had performed our task perfectly. I'd even personally grown a massive spell matrix out of my crystals all around the city, keeping it hidden several yards below the ground, so I could bring up a barrier on short notice and with minimal assistance!
For a moment, gazing at the city we were preparing to attack, I wondered at my own actions.
I was, remorselessly and quite purposefully, setting this world up for an invasion. Billions would die before I was through. Those who survived would be enslaved and forced to obey the will of their demonic overlords, at the very least.
Then again… weren't they obeying evil overlords already?
I let out a tired chuckle before passing out final orders for our people to follow until we returned with the main army. Then I triggered the artifact Glaustro had given me.
Instantly, the mana drain sucked down about twenty percent of my total reserves. Another ten vanished before the stupid black marble activated and a portal tore open right in front of me and Mia.
Stepping through, we were greeted by an eager look on our colonel's face.
"I trust things went well?" Glaustro demanded. If he was prone to such displays of Emotion, I knew he would be hopping in place out of anticipation and anxiety.
"It went well. I mean, there were some complications…" I sighed, bracing myself to tell him about the threat of our invasion world getting blown up by uppity humans.
After another two days of preparation and planning, we were finally engaged in the last step before our invasion popped off: securing our supply of mortal soldiers.
To be on this side of the equation was… odd, to say the least.
Much like my own initiation, we were located in a massive underground complex beneath Torment's capital city. I hadn't known that was where we were when I'd gone through the process as a mortal, of course. I'd only been aware of the line, the pain, the claiming of my sword, and then the traumatic start of the invasion itself.
I was kind of a mess back then, really.
This time, I could 'admire' the line of many open portals, from which emerged rows of worried, hopeful, or arrogant mortals. I knew the latter came from the 'important' families on conquered worlds (read 'local traitors') or the best performers of various training camps.
It didn't matter. Reality wouldn't take too long to crush their spirit.
One by one, mortals approached the end of their respective lines, had the Abyss shoved into them, and then were pushed along for branding and basic weapon acquisition.
It… wasn't pretty.
I could still conjure up the pain that had wracked my body back then. Same with the absolute fear I had felt at the thought of getting collared.
Speaking of, about three in ten mortals failed the Abyssal initiation. They fell, spasmed or screamed or frothed at the mouth, and finally went still with an empty look in their eyes. They were then fitted with a black, red-spiked collar and booted into a crowd of mindless drones.
Out of everything I'd seen and done in a while, this was the most disturbing experience. The sight of the failures, the newly minted imps, sent shudders of fear, disgust, and pity coursing through me.
It wasn't really their fault that their souls weren't strong enough to withstand what the legion was asking of them. And it wasn't really fair that they'd be used up as cheap muscle in this initial invasion battle, then 'allowed' to revive in the Abyss, where they'd skulk off into the wilderness of Torment to become someone else's problem.
Some of them would get hunted down and devoured within minutes of being loosed outside the city. By the demons of my layer, at that. Glaustro had quietly admitted that the weakest and most desperate members of the legion were heartily looking forward to the feeding frenzy that would ensue when the imps revived.
But I knew that the whole thing didn't upset me because of its inherent unfairness. Oh no, it rankled because I could have been reduced to one of those imps.
A moment of hesitation, a couple more seconds for me to gather myself, and that collar would have been fastened around my neck before I could stop it.
I shuddered again and looked away, directing my attention to Glaustro instead.
My colonel stood inside a runic matrix of incredible complexity. His entire mana pool was vibrating through the surrounding air, wreathing him in a corona of black and red.
It was his job to whip the recruits into a frenzy this time. His job to deliver that initial push. The other compatible demons within our ranks would help, of course, but that first moment was all him.
And it was also another demonic 'tradition' which I had supremely mixed feelings on.
Not that it mattered. The legion needed killers, and only a small fraction of the mortals being inducted into its ranks were actually ready and willing to become that. The majority would hesitate, fight it, or even try to run once shit hit the fan.
So, there Glaustro stood, ready to give them a little boost to get started.
Far, far too quickly, our mortal troops were ready. Demons surrounded them, leering and laughing at their fate. The portal was ripped open. The recruits almost huddled together, fear taking root in the expressions of even the most self-assured.
"You are here because you are weak." Glaustro kicked off his speech with narrowed eyes and a deceptively calm voice. "I will give you a chance to change that. Go forth, kill, devour souls, strengthen yourselves, and ascend. Take control of your destiny… or perish. I care not either way."
I couldn't say he was particularly inspiring, but it did the job of getting the recruits to focus up and look at the portal. The city on the other side seemed to be barely a mile away.
"There are souls waiting for you there. You will get them whether you want to or not. For yourself, and for your legion. Now, run, little mortals! Run and kill in Torment's name!"
Glaustro's voice boomed out, his Emotion erupting and infecting the recruits. The compatible demons added their voices to the orders, and the mortals' bearing shifted. Aggression and madness took hold. Reason was shattered entirely.
Snarling and spitting, the horde surged forth.