Chapter 23

  Name: Calvin Jacob Hyde

  Race: Human. Sort of.

  Titles: Hellfire Lord of the Fourth Ring / Hellfire Champion of the Fourth Ring/ Weirdness Incarnate (LOL)

  Level: 17

  HP (Health Points): 230

  HMP (Hell Mana Points): 450

  Strength: 50

  Constitution: 90

  Willpower: 40

  Soulstrength: 45

  Demonic Race Traits:

  - Live in Hell

  Makes breathing Hell’s toxic atmosphere possible.

  - Demonic language

  Enables communication with all demonic races.

  - Fire and heat resistance

  As the name suggests, duh!

  - Demonic constitution

  Tougher bones, denser muscles, hardened skin, the whole lot.

  - Demonic vision

  Enables seeing through Hell’s toxic and obscuring atmosphere.

  - Demonic hearing

  If you have to ask, you’re an idiot.

  - Hell Mana Affinity

  The ability to process and utilise Hell Mana.

  - Demonic Help Button (DHB)

  An information source to compensate for lack of innate demonic knowledge and intuition.

  Human Race Traits

  - Access to class system (being physically present upstairs is required)

  - Access to upstairs skills and spells (being physically present upstairs is required)

  - Upstairs Mana Affinity

  Demonic Skills:

  - Hades Heal (Level 3)

  Single injury, recovers 7-17 HP. Cost: 37 HMP

  - Cure of the Damned

  Removes curses, ailments or infections, recovers 3-6 HP per minute for seven minutes. Cost: 24 HMP/minute

  - Touch of Hell (Level 2)

  Cost: 75 HMP

  - Infernal Storm (Level 3)

  Cost: 250 HMP

  - Hell Lance (Level 3)

  Cost: 92 HMP

  - Master of the Hellfire Blade (Level 3)

  Upstairs Skills:

  - none

  Combined Skills:

  - Psychic Resistance (combined) (Level 1)

  Dynastic traits and derived skills (Hyde Dynasty):

  - Access and authority to control aspects and functions of the Fourth Ring of Hell, as determined by the rules set by the Genius Loci of this realm.

  - Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors

  Cost: 1 HMP per access.

  - Wreathed in Flames

  Cost: 80 HMP per minute.

  - Will of the Infernal Tyrant (Level 3)

  Bonded item set:

  - Burning Darkness, sword of the Hellfire Lord (Unique Weapon) (Set manager, self-appointed)

  - UTR Corporation, Army designation Mark 7 Survival and Combat Suit (SAC), Medic variant (Unique Armour)

  - JTEC S80 Assault Rifle, Automatic, 8.3 mm AP flechette, caseless (Unique weapon) (Hellfire Attributed Hell Mana infusion of ammunition during the firing process. Optional. + 7 to damage per rifle round. Cost: 1 HMP per round.)

  - JTEC TR50 Semi Automatic pistol, 5 mm flechette, caseless (Unique weapon)

  - MediCorp Army designation Integrated Field Diagnostic Suite (IFD) (Unique accessory)

  Level: 22

  Durabiliy: 1070

  Strength: +120

  Physical defence: 1400

  Macical defence: 2100

  Damage per rifle round: 60 - 120 (67 - 127 per infused round)

  Damage per sidearm round: 13 - 40

  IFD efficiency: 20 (Increasing IFD efficiency allows for more accurate guiding of healing skills or spells, thus increasing healing speed and quality.)

  I read my stat sheet, and I liked what I saw. Skill levels were coming along alright, and my SAC’s progress — or rather the entire set’s — looked promising. I kind of liked the option to add Hell Mana to my rifle ammunition, turning them into tracer rounds and adding a little more power to them. I also liked that Burning Darkness was trying to distribute the energy that came with a new level evenly between all stats so far and leaving the IFD alone for now. While it bugged me a little that I had agreed to let him handle the set, I would have done the levelling of it the same way. In any case, I didn’t have much reason to complain about his work.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Flamey walked by my side as we headed to the tent in the middle of the camp. Tarashak was nowhere to be seen, though. The “generals” menu in the “military” section of the RMS placed him some five kilometres from the camp, doing something along with a few mages and warriors out in the Wilds. He was probably letting off some steam — perhaps hunting monsters was his way of getting into his zen place where he could finally make his mind up about our next move. Honestly, I was getting impatient as the archmage had not made a decision yet about where to go from here. I understood his situation, and I understood we were waiting for a few more scouts to come back with more stragglers. But the more we waited the stronger the enemy was going to get, and the weaker the other Fourth Ring forces — hopefully still fighting all over the realm — would become, and my chances of getting that dungeon would keep slimming.

  I sat down under the minotaur-skin roof of the tent along with Flamey, and I wished I’d had the foresight to have a smoke and to eat half a Crunchymel bar before coming back. Now, with mages and warrior demons stealing glances at us as they did their work in the camp, only Flamey had the luxury of munching on the second chocolate bar she had received in exchange for her kingdom. Once she was done with that, even she didn’t have much to do, and she turned to me.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m bored. Can I play with Whirly?’ she asked, her eyes wide and pleading as she looked at me.

  At this point I had to accept that my daughter’s new best friend was an Allied Systems Army standard issue reconnaissance drone, and it wasn’t an “it” but a “he”, and he was Whirly.

  ‘Fine, you can.’ I sighed. ‘But be careful this time! Keep an eye on those smaller branches, okay? We don’t want Whirly to be damaged now, do we? You were lucky yesterday.’

  ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ she jumped to her feet, her hands shooting up into the air in celebration.

  I summoned from my storage the container that served as Whirly’s home, and Flamey leaped at it like a hungry predator. I watched her open it and take the drone out with care, then fiddling the control panel out from its slot in the crate. Despite only having piloted the drone three times so far, she was rather good at it, and with using the manual controls to boot, watching the small screen on the panel. She was a very quick learner. At the same time, I had to wonder if I was too soft for letting her treat military equipment as toys or friends, and that made me wonder if a residual effect of her Princess Charm was still present in my mind. I knew for a fact she hadn’t used the skill on me since our talk, but I wasn’t sure whether it had caused any permanent “damage”. Oh well, did it even matter? Or did I really want to know? She was happy, I was happy, and ignorance was bliss. And I’d have to find a way to charge the drone’s power cells somehow, otherwise the few full spares I had wouldn’t last too long, and Flamey would be disappointed, and I’d be robbed of a useful tool. I was sure Burning Darkness would be able to think of something, even if the drone wasn’t a part of my set.

  I linked the drone to my SAC, bringing only the camera feed up on my NeuroHUD, leaving the controls on manual and on the panel Flamey held in her hands. With nothing to do, I resigned myself to sit next to my daughter and watch as she and Whirly embarked on their fourth expedition to explore the surrounding Wilds.

  ***

  The drone was an agile little contraption, and Flamey piloted it very well, if not expertly. She was having the time of her life with this, grinning ear to ear as she worked the controls, watching the screen intently. I thought if she had a SAC with a NeuroHUD, and a few drones to fly around with her thoughts instead of her hands on a control panel, I wouldn’t be able to get her out of the SAC. I shuddered at the thought. A demon with a SAC. Hm. Scary. Well, for now I just let her have her fun and watched the camera feed as she made the drone zig-zag around the trees. The wildlife was ignoring Whirly as per usual — since the drone had no soul, no Hell Mana and no EXP to give — so the only thing Flamey had to worry about was to not bump it into the numerous twisting-twirling branches of the weird trees. Minutes passed, and I was beginning to doze off while sitting. I should have had a coffee while out of camp — I had almost mastered my Touch of Hell skill to the point I could heat a cup of water up without boiling it away completely. Something caught my eyes on the camera feed from the drone, and I was wide awake in an instant.

  ‘Flamey, get the dro … Whirly back a bit and turn him left and aim the camera down, please,’ I asked her.

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Saw something move. Not wildlife.’

  She did as I asked, and there they were. The minotaurs.

  ‘Oh, they’re coming!’ Flamey said as she saw the bullish brutes trudging through the forest, cutting down branches as well as the monsters they were attracting.

  ‘Reinos, over here on the double!’ I yelled for the garrison commander while checking the drone’s flight path recorded in its software so I would have an idea what to tell the guy.

  ‘Flamey, I’m taking Whirly over for a minute, okay?’ I said, and she nodded.

  I flew the drone between the branches, as high above the heads of the enemy units as the forest let me, trying to get a picture of their numbers and the direction of their advance. The mage captain came running and slid to a halt in front of the tent, his robe fluttering.

  ‘Minotaurs, at least a league from camp, coming from the south, heading north-west.’ I said. ‘They’re spread out widely, but there’s hundreds of them from what I can see. Probably more. They’re doing a wide sweep, and we’re in their path.’

  ‘They’re not in the detection aura yet then,’ he said, nodding his horned head. ‘I’ll get the troops ready to defend the garrison.’

  ‘No!’ I said to him, keeping my focus on the camera feed as the drone flew over more and more enemy units.

  It was difficult to determine their numbers, but it wasn’t just a few hundred. Maybe a thousand? Maybe more? I knew what they were doing, though: they were looking for us. For me, specifically. That minotaur king wanted the title and the authority I happened to hold, and he was searching for it systematically, his army sweeping through this part of the Wilds, casting a net as wide as their numbers allowed. If the minotaur king had access to the same kind of army management system I had — and Button had assured me he had, albeit in a different form than mine — the moment any of his soldiers stumbled upon us, that unit’s captain would know, therefore their generals would know, and of course the demonic minotaur king of the Third Realm would know. Then we’d be overrun by a comparably lower levelled but never-ending stream of minotaur warriors. We didn’t stand a chance; we’d be worn down and killed to the last demon in short order.

  ‘No? What do you mean, Lord?’ Rienos asked, looking confused.

  ‘Get the entire garrison to pack up and ready to leave in 10 minutes!’ I ordered the captain.

  ‘But the general …’ he began to protest.

  ‘He’s not here. And he works for me, therefore you work for me. Now, get the whole company ready to leave! Ten minutes!’ I re-issued the order, and tapped my sidearm, just to remind him who was in charge.

  [Skill: Will of the Infernal Tyrant reached level 4.]

  Great, that heavily top-down command structure I did not want was starting to happen.

  ‘Yes, Lord!’ the demon bellowed then ran off to get things ready, barking orders to his mages and warriors, and the garrison burst into hectic activity.

  ‘Daddy, what are we doing?’ Flamey asked, looking at me curiously.

  ‘We’re leaving. Could you bring Whirly back?’

  ‘Doing it,’ Flamey announced and began to fly the drone back to us.

  Time was up. Tarashak was a powerful mage, his mastery of his skills was something to behold, but he had just as much experience and aptitude to be a real general as I had — which was close to none — and it was now bearing fruit. It was … my fault. Sort of. I myself had been unable to fully comprehend and accept my own position in all of this. I wasn’t sure whether I was unable or unwilling to do so, or perhaps it was a full-on denial of my new reality. Just like Tarashak, I was used to waiting for orders and following them to the letter whenever possible. I had to do away with that mindset. I wasn’t a sergeant anymore, and it sure wasn’t just myself and a squad of soldiers that depended on me. The approaching enemy, numbering in their thousands, had a strange way of hammering it home, giving me no choice but to finally accept that I was the one who had to deal with this. I was the one in charge, whether I liked it or not, whether the stupid Genius had intended it or not. And I had to start acting like it. What if this was Hell? What if my new people were demons? What if magical skills and spells were a thing? A war was a war, and a soldier was a soldier, and stakes were as high as they were in any conflict.

  ‘Right! I am the demon lord of this realm, these are my people, those are my enemies, and I am in charge here,’ I said to myself, and it was strangely comforting to hear myself say it. Then, I took a deep breath, and I got to work.

  I opened the map, zooming in on our general area for settlements, found a few options, then checked the “cities” menu for as much details as I could. Once I knew where I wanted to go, I opened the “generals” menu and sent a message to Tarashak.

  ‘General, a thousand strong enemy force is approaching the camp. Maybe more than a thousand. They’ll find us in an hour or so. You know what that means. We’re abandoning the garrison. We’re going north, all the way to a town called …’ I said, consulting the map again ‘ … called Scaragar. It looks the most defensible of any of the towns we could reach. You’re almost two leagues ahead of us, so head there with your escort and report on the state of that town. We’ll meet you there.’

  Tarashak replied immediately, his message popping up on my NeuroHUD in text form.

  [Abandon the garrison? If I head back, we have a good chance of fighting a thousand of them off.]

  He argued.

  ‘Tarashak, I’m sure you could fight them off by yourself, but once they know I’m here, and with my heir no less, there will be no end to them. We’re leaving, and you are to go ahead to scout out this Scaragar place before we get there. This is an order. Don’t argue, just do it!’

  [And then? Then what, Hellfire Lord?]

  He demanded.

  ‘I have plan. It may not be a good plan, but since you haven’t come up with anything, I decided a bad plan is better than no plan. You have your orders general! Over and out.’ I sent the message to him and closed the magical connection to him via the military management menus.

  I wasn’t lying; I had a plan for our campaign. I had spent enough time browsing the map, the menus and the various options and functions I had control over as demon lord, to have a rough idea of what I could or couldn’t do. I had enough information to cobble a plan together. Indeed, a bad, hasty plan was better than just sitting on our asses here and let the enemy find us and grind us down in a pointless battle.

  I turned to Flamey.

  ‘Alright, sweetheart, let’s go grab everything we can and stash them in storage.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy, let’s do that!’ She smiled at me, and we got to work.