An army of demons was, at its core, a roiling mass of chaos and violence. Just because the mortals were still mere recruits didn't keep them from demonstrating those qualities.
If anything, the mortals embodied those traits even better than demons did.
Pulsing my magic to trigger the massive barrier I'd arranged before, I took to the night sky with Mia in my arms, her invisibility spells coiled tightly around us. That gave us a perfect vantage point to watch the mortals' headlong charge.
The violent Emotions had taken root within them utterly, wiping out the minds of all but the most resistant recruits. They were a slobbering mass, kept from slaughtering each other only by virtue of the Abyssal influence slumbering deep inside each of them.
And all of it was our fault.
I could only sigh when the imps were unleashed as well. Their collars suddenly tightened and the spikes shot into their bodies, pumping them full of Abyssal mana with no regard for their health or sanity. One by one, they transformed into monstrosities of muscle and pure physical destructiveness, tearing through our own mortal army in a desperate need to reach the city and feast.
It was the very first 'test' Glaustro had approved for our mortal troops, and it was exceedingly simple: were you enough of an idiot to ignore your surroundings and get trampled by charging goliaths drugged up on Abyssal magic? Or could you act to save yourself, despite having been whipped into a Frenzy?
After all, even demons could lose themselves to a collective Frenzy. We wanted to identify the most self-controlled soldiers amongst our troops. So, there went the imps, tearing and stomping and generally causing havoc in their rush through our army.
Our entire army, I might add.
The underground chamber where I'd stood with Glaustro wasn't our only staging ground. All the others had also been ordered to release their recruits against this one city. More portals than I could ever casually count surrounded Bredingshire in a ring, each unleashing a tide of temporarily insane mortals.
This wasn't how it had happened during my own first invasion. Naberius had separated his mortal armies and sent them after fort cities all over Berlis. That was fine, and that was valid.
But Berlis was a world of swords and magic. A world teeming with wonder, yes, but also monsters, warring kingdoms, and other threats. That had kept the population numbers relatively low, especially in fort cities where only the soldiers and their families could be found.
On this particular Earth iteration? Well… Our total intake of mortal recruits was around five million, give or take. The population of the city we were attacking was almost twice that.
We still had staggering numbers, yes. Until you realized that a third of those mortals would turn into imps, and that a ridiculous percentage of the actual recruits would be weeded out in the very first engagement.
Basically, our invasion was off to a very messy and chaotic start. There was absolutely no way to keep that many mortals in line to begin with, even if we wanted to. And the modern, technologically advanced nature of the world made a ton of the 'regular' legion tactics useless.
Not that we had access to those standard legion strategies, of course. Glaustro had done his best to acquire the general's elusive handbook right up until the end, and failed. We would have to rely on our experience of going through a Naberius-directed invasion on Berlis.
Glaustro had become an officer during that invasion, but he never got to read the general's guidebook. His promotion had occurred well after the invasion kicked off. He was never afforded the time to take things slow and learn, especially once things on Berlis started going to hell in a handbasket
Really, after that whole fiasco, it was remarkable that we'd come so far!
I turned my attention back to the battle just in time to see the wave of imps hit the outskirts of the city.
There was no wall for them to overcome. No wary guards to sound the alarm. Oh, someone had likely spotted something, even though it was the middle of the night, but the city was already cut off from outside assistance. My barrier was snapping closed overhead, turning from a creeping shimmer into a proper, semitransparent dome.
The sound of concrete and metal getting torn apart reached me all the way up where I was hovering over the city.
The imps had encountered a couple gas stations, or whatever the local fuel equivalent was, and they were tearing their way through them in search of the poor staff within. The staff… they'd probably been dreading yet another boring shift in a city people were rarely keen to visit. Now there they were, getting torn apart for their nice, juicy souls.
Of course, the main body of the army didn't stop there. They rushed into the streets, freely assaulting anyone they came across.
Ever so briefly, I wondered if I'd chosen wrong. After all, it was fine to let the army beneath my feet loot and tear their way through the city, but they were supposed to be tested! If they just swept over it like was nothing, then nothing would be achieved.
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Then, from somewhere down below, shots began to ring out. Even imps bellowed in pain as bullets bit into them, powered by the technology of this Earth. The bullets enraged the imps more than anything, yes, but they also inflicted the first of the wounds that would eventually drag the creatures down.
That was creepily pleasing, both that our troops were being challenged and that the imps were slowly heading to their deaths. I really, really didn't enjoy looking at their twisted physical forms, their limbs reduced to asymmetrical tools of murder with jagged red crystals popping out of their skin at random.
"Is this what we were like?" Mia asked quietly.
I ever so gently bumped my mind into hers to see what she meant. Her Emotions were churning wildly as she watched a group of recruits fall upon a family like rabid zombies. Hacking, slashing, tearing. Either hoping they would be the ones to land the killing blow and get a soul, or just venting their aggression.
Wait… did Glaustro forget to tell them about having to gather souls? I wondered. Was it mentioned by the clerks brought in for the processing? Eh… Not worth worrying about.
"Yeah," I replied. "Yeah, I think we were that bad. Maybe not outright, but… I remember at least a couple kills from that first battle on Berlis I'm not proud of at all."
She didn't respond, choosing to burrow into my chest a little harder instead.
We hovered a little longer, watching the violence consume the edges of the city. Then I sent us plummeting closer to its center and the proud tower-like skyscrapers of the main megacorps in charge of Bredingshire.
Thanks to Mia's invisibility spells, no one spotted us. Not a single one of the milling robotic monstrosities so much as glanced in our direction.
When I say 'robotic monstrosities', I really mean it. They were hulks of metal and electricity, stomping through the streets as they positioned themselves to bar entry into this affluent core of the city.
And I was worried the mortals wouldn't get the challenge they needed!
My lips twitched in amusement. The slightest application of magic to my ears sharpened my sense of hearing well beyond the range of any mortal species.
There were people down there with the robots, and I wanted to know what they were saying.
"We don't know where they're coming from! Prepare to engage the giant brutes. Worry about their origin later!"
"How the fuck did someone figure out teleportation?!"
"This has Griftech Industries written all over it. I told you we needed to wipe out those mutation-obsessed bastards!"
The chatter was all over the place, full of bustle and general panic. Everyone had been suddenly woken up in the middle of the night. No one knew what was happening. The top corpo representatives were already scrambling to find a way to evacuate until the shitstorm of epic proportions blew over.
Sure, they were swearing vengeance and planning to come back later. They all wanted to pick over the aforementioned shitstorm to discover who needed to die, and also how to replicate the creation of imps and 'whatever drugs the mob was on.' But their priority was escape.
They were so single-minded, in fact, that they weren't using a lot of common sense. I watched as a helicopter lifted off and ran straight into the containment dome, its passengers apparently having chosen to ignore the flickering obstacle. The resulting explosion lit up the night sky and sent burning debris raining onto the city below.
Another test for our mortal soldiers to survive! Really, we were spoiling them with all these various threats to their lives. Guns, the drugged-up humans who were a common sight in this particular city, the robots, and now a rain of burning debris? Why, back in my day…
I snorted at my own joke as I listened to the humans throw around words like 'hard light projectors' and 'tech that isn't even in testing yet.' Not a single one of them reached for the term 'magic', which was perfectly understandable, if a little sad.
"You think we should get involved?" Mia suddenly asked, still tracking all the devastation with an odd look on her face.
"Do you want to?"
"Not really."
"Then we don't."
"Glaustro might mind?"
"If Glaustro wants anything at all from us, he'll contact us," I assured her. "Besides, I don't think he'll have anything for us to do for quite a while. The locals are well-entrenched, the imps aren't even dead yet, and the recruits still have a lot of killing to do. But they're doing well so far."
"I guess… They're pretty inefficient, though. And I think they're having a harder time shaking the compulsions off than we did."
Squinting down at the conflict, I realized Mia was right. The vast majority of the mortals were still frothing at the mouth and launching themselves at every soul that crossed their path.
And it's already been… close to an hour and a half?
Huh. Time really did fly when you were having fun. Or, as was more appropriate for the moment, when you were stuck watching a car crash happen in slow motion. You knew you should look away. You really did. But it was so tempting to just keep watching…
"Want to find something fun to do?" I asked, feeling Mia perk up in my embrace immediately.
"Can we?"
"Of course. I mean, look… right… over… there!" I awkwardly pointed with my right hand, maneuvering a little to keep holding onto her while I did so.
Mia's eyes landed on a very richly appointed penthouse in one of the corpo skyscrapers, where a worried man was pacing and shouting at a group of cowering people.
Much more important than the mortals, however, were all the entertainment systems in the penthouse. I recognized them from the local memories I had stolen.
"If we go now, we can practice. And then indulge in some online play. I mean, just imagine: you're some random kid playing a video game, and then you find out that on the other end is an actual demon! And you've been cussing them out for the last fifteen minutes! We can even track them down and pop on over to see how they'd react," I teased, making Mia giggle.
Both of us knew I wouldn't actually follow through on that. Killing people for their souls was one thing. Murking a kid over gaming trash talk? Quite another.
Regardless, I tucked my wings, sent us into free fall, and released a pulse of mana that blew out the penthouse windows. The people inside screamed and scattered. Another application of mana helped me slow down, allowing me to land gently on the penthouse floor.
"Right, then! Would one of you fine ladies and gentlemen happen to have the passwords to all these wonderful gaming consoles?" Because of course the consoles required an account and a constant online connection, even in a megacorp postmodern society. "No? No one? That's okay, I'll find them myself."
I grinned as my eyes lit up from the sheer quantity of the mana I was channeling, just for funsies and special effects.
A couple soul-munching minutes later, Mia and I were settled on the floor. A game booted up on the console we'd chosen while a war raged far below us in the doomed city.
I had a surprising amount of fun that day.