Chapter 24

  ‘Not the worst plan I’ve ever heard,’ Burning Darkness commented when I finally gave in and told him what I had in mind. ‘Ugrathar’s plans were usually just him yelling “chaaaarge”, and no-one had the option to dispute it. No wonder Tarashak couldn’t make up his mind about what to do, he never had to.’

  Well, I knew of another demon lord who had a large enough force at his command that he could simply point them at a problem and yell “chaaarge”. Unfortunately, I happened to be the problem for that nasty minotaur. We had to move fast, which wasn’t as simple as it sounded in a forest this thick and filled with wildlife. I could almost run without getting tangled up with the beasts that were springing forth every few minutes — well placed single shots from my rifle meant instant death to anything below level 25, and this wasn’t the time to worry about the finite nature of ammunition. The rest of our column, over 200 demons, were in a slightly more difficult position. Their levels averaged out around 32, which meant the wildlife wasn’t a life threatening challenge to them either, but they would have been slowed down a lot more, if not for Reinos and his mages constantly flinging their spells, and of course Flamey’s Lost in the Fog skill. There was also the fact that they were much taller and bulkier than I was. Luckily, the same was true for the pursuing minotaurs as well, and I hoped the monsters of the forest were finding them more appetising than us. But all in all, we were advancing at a decent enough pace.

  ‘Lord, the enemy entered the detection aura around the garrison,’ Reinos jogged up to me from behind and reported.

  I went into the “military” menu, selected our one and only garrison and demoted it back to nothing, the assigned defensive auras all vanishing along with the designation.

  ‘Okay, that means right now their vanguard is some eight kilometres behind us,’ I said.

  ‘Kilometres, my Lord?’ the mage asked.

  ‘Uhm, about two and a half leagues,’ I told him. ‘They will soon find the clearing and realise we were there until recently. Hopefully it will take some time for them to re-organise their forces and to start following our trail. I want to get to Scaragar at least three or four hours ahead of them, faster if possible, so we’re not stopping for anything or anyone. Not for levels, not for rest, not for anything. Is that understood, captain?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ he said. ‘I sent word to the scouts who are still out to head there as well.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘The general will be waiting for us there. We should reach the place in about two days, if we’re lucky, and then the real work will begin.’

  ‘The … real work, my Lord?’ he inquired.

  ‘Yeah. The real work.’ I smiled behind the visor of my helmet.

  I wished I could have taken it off. I really needed some water, but with my authority still heavily dependent on a certain skill of mine — which I wasn’t all that happy about after all — I didn’t want to risk it yet. Maybe with some more time they’d come to accept that a human could make a decent demon lord — which was something I now fully intended to become. But for now, the only thing we had to do was to march on and reach our destination.

  ***

  Despite my promises of not stopping at all, not even for a break, we had stopped a few times to rest and eat — but even with that we had made good time. Flamey had held out admirably, mostly because I had let her ride on my shoulders from time to time so she could rest. The troops and I had exhausted ourselves, but neither their demonic nor my human pride had allowed any of us to complain.

  The forest of unending black and glowing trees and their all-encompassing branches finally ceased after two days of relentless marching, and a vast, desolate area greeted us as we finally reached the edge of it. A barren baked and cracked plain, the ground sloping up under the burning sky that I hadn’t seen for days and realised I had begun to miss a little. I was so glad to be out of this stupid forest, I didn’t have the words. In the distance, I saw for the first time what the hills my map had promised looked like. Of course, I hadn’t expected to see the gentle curves of the grassy or forested hills I remembered from my childhood on Earth — I had seen enough extraterrestrial landscapes on terraformed colony worlds to know that geographical formations could come in all shapes and sizes. Still, Hell seemed to have different ideas of what a hill was, and I began to worry about what a town would look like built on top of one of the huge, angular, jagged-edged protrusions that looked like the teeth in the jaw of a planet-sized monster. Or perhaps it was that same monster that had bitten a chunk out of a mountain, and I was looking at the remains bearing the mark of that bite. Either way, hills were hills, and I wasn’t disappointed; a fort on a hill was more defensible than a fort on the plains, and I had great plans for this unsuspecting town of Scaragar.

  Tarashak and his group of mages and warriors had been waiting exactly where he’d marked his position on the map we’d shared, and he rushed to meet me as we marched out of the forest to the open. I had pondered and practiced what I would say and how I would act when I saw the guy again. I didn’t want to undermine his authority as the general in charge of his army and of the campaign, but I couldn’t allow either him nor myself to be slow and indecisive anymore. I had done enough of that since I had landed in Hell. Now that I had a better idea of how things worked here, what I was facing and what I really had to do, I couldn’t afford to dilly-dally or to just go with the flow. For better or for worse, I was in charge, and I was going to wage this war the way I saw fit. Poor demons, having an almost retired army medic for a king. Tough luck.

  ‘General,’ I addressed him as he arrived before me and before he could get a word in. ‘I brought you your army. I commend captain Reinos for handling and leading the troops well throughout our trek. You should be proud to have a capable demon like him serving under you. Now, have you done what I asked of you?’

  Reinos and the rest of the column were getting out of the woods as I spoke, and I thought I saw a smile on the captain’s face as I praised his performance in front of his general. I could tell by Tarashak’s expression he had a hard time processing my words and the way I’d spoken to him. I thought he might have gotten a little used to my newfound sharp tone throughout our message exchanges, as well as the increasing doses of crisp, business-like professionalism expected of any higher-ranking officer of the Allied Systems Army. This was, however, the first time he got to experience it in person, hearing it with his own ears. And from a human to boot.

  ‘Well, general?’ I asked again when he didn’t say anything for two seconds.

  ‘Yes, Hellfire Lord. I have done as you requested,’ he said, shaking his shock off.

  [Skill: Will of the Infernal Tyrant reached level 5.]

  Oh damn, I had forgot to switch that off. While it would have been nice if everyone just followed my orders unquestioningly, I didn’t want to get to the point where my troops couldn’t or wouldn’t think for themselves if I wasn’t present or couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to any given situation. The previous demon lord had demonstrated perfectly why it was a bad way to do things. And was this an active or a passive skill anyway?

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  ‘Button?’ I called on my helper. ‘Can I disable the Will of the Infernal Tyrant skill for a bit?’

  [Yes. Skill disabled. Please note that any effect the skill has already achieved on its targets, will remain in place. Please activate the skill again if you wish to increase your influence further and if you wish the skill to level again.]

  Hm. Now that answered the question whether any of Flamey’s Princess Charm’s effects on me were permanent or not. Oh well, since it was Flamey, I didn’t mind. Now, back to the matter at hand.

  ‘Is the area still free of minotaurs?’ I asked the general.

  ‘It is. These hills and the settlements amongst them are as irrelevant to the enemy as they normally are to us,’ he reported. ‘Lord, I still don’t know what your plan is. The demons living here are of course honoured their new lord is here, but they too wonder why you have chosen it.’

  ‘Irrelevant? I can see why,’ I said, looking at the seemingly impassable, giant shapes people called hills around here. ‘Well, I am here to make theirs the most relevant town in the entire ring. Are they prepared to fight and give their lives if needed?’

  ‘If their lord orders it so, they will do so,’ Tarashak answered.

  ‘Good. Let’s get to work then. We have five hours at best,’ I said, and I motioned the archmage general to lead the way.

  ***

  Tarashak led our procession through the gently sloping plains until we arrived at the foot of the first hill. I estimated it to be at least a hundred metres tall, the way up rather steep, maybe at a 40 degree angle for the most part. It would have been manageable to climb it without mountaineering equipment, if not for the loose, ash-like soil covering the otherwise rocky hill and sharp spikes and edges protruding out of the hillside everywhere and all the way to the top. If there was indeed a town somewhere up there on one of these, then good luck to any invaders trying to take it by force. Then again, any invaders here would have magic and other demonic things to throw at it, so I’d still need to make some serious changes to prepare for a siege.

  Luckily, we didn’t have to climb the dangerous looking hills. We marched through the narrow valley between the hills, until Tarashak led us onto what looked like a road, or more like a wide path well traveled over decades or centuries. It led us to the tallest of the hills, one I had thought looked like a fang sticking out from the rest of the teeth when I’d seen it from a distance. From this close, it was an even more intimidating sight, towering over our small army. And it had stairs – thank all the gods real and imagined – roughly hewn into the hillside, leading up in a zig-zag pattern and thus alleviating the steepness of the climb.

  ‘Is this the only way up to the town?’ I asked Tarashak as he and I took the first step onto the stairway ahead of our column of soldiers.

  ‘There is another, similar stairway on the other side of the hill,’ he said. ‘These are the only two ways to Scaragar.’

  ‘Good stuff. I like this place.’ I smiled behind the visor. ‘This will do just fine.’

  I couldn’t have asked for a better place to fortify to withstand a million minotaurs that would be soon hell-bent on taking it. Then I sighed; I was sure Tarashak wouldn’t be too happy, and I was even more sure Flamey would throw a tantrum once I told them my plan. But I was going to see it through no matter what. It took us a good twenty minutes to jog up the stairs, and I thanked my stats and my SAC, because the toughest, most athletic marines I’d met would have collapsed by the end of this climb.

  Finally, we stood at the entrance to the town of Scaragar, home to almost five thousand demons according to the cities and settlement menus of my Ring Management System. Under any other circumstances I would have thought walls and gates were rather redundant for a city on a plateau on top of a hill over a hundred metres tall, but now I was thankful. I had chosen well. A delegation of four demons was waiting for us in front of the open gate — two men, two women. Three of them were the kind of fire-demons like Flamey, Tarashak or Reinos, but the fourth member of the welcoming committee looked different. Quite different in fact. Lucky for me my face was hidden behind my helmet’s visor and no-one could see me stare with my mouth hung open.

  The man was as large as any other demon, but he only had one horn right in the middle of his head, and his skin was sort of a light, icy blue. I had not really dug into the populations menus of the RMS, I wasn’t even sure if it had any statistics about what kind of demons lived here other than the ones I knew.

  ‘Button?’ I asked my faithful helper. ‘What kind of demon is this?’

  [It is an ice-demon, native to the Fourth Ring.]

  The answer came.

  ‘What? No. Why?’ I said, unable to decide if I should just accept this or not.

  ‘It’s an ice demon, my man, Button’s not lying.’ Burning Darkness informed me with a bored voice.

  ‘That … doesn’t make sense. This place is hot, the sky is on fire, and the trees are filled with lava. Why do demons with “ice” in their names live here?’ I demanded. I was tired, but not so tired as to not take an issue with this.

  ‘They’re demons in Hell, they can take the heat,’ my sword explained ‘They’re called ice demons because they’re hides are blue and they have a preference for skills that work with water and ice. What’s the big deal, huh?’

  I wanted to argue about this, but the town representatives made their way to me and Tarashak, looking as nervous as new recruits meeting their drill sergeant for the first time.

  ‘My Lord, welcome to Scaragar,’ the fire-demon heading their group said, all four of them bowing deeply and still looking down on me, and of course at Flamey who had just caught up to us. These guys were as tall as any demon I’d met so far. However, as I focused on them, I got a sense of their overall strength, and I was sure none of them had more than 20 levels to their names, probably less. The man continued. ‘We are pleased that you have chosen to visit the Hills of Charred Bones, and our city within it. I am Erlakhen, overseer of Scaragar, by right of my levels and my strength. Which of course cannot compare to yours.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me until now, and it should have, but I had no idea how demons perceived my strength and levels. I was a level 17 human, sort of, with a level 22 bonded set, so did they sense I was around level 39? I’d have to ask someone about this, but now wasn’t the time, and I chased the thought away.

  ‘I am Hellfire Lord Hyde, ruling demon lord of the Fourth Ring. I have taken the title and the realm from Ugrathar, and it seems I have inherited not only his realm but an invasion of the Third Ring scum as well.’

  ‘Indeed, my lord, we have heard of the events taking place, however we are yet to see a minotaur in our hills,’ Erlakhan said, still bowing his head and looking down on me. ‘Your general, the renowned Smoldering Storm, informs us you have plans for Scaragar. We are happy to have our most capable join your army, including myself, and campaign to rid our ring of the stinking, bullheaded invaders.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Erlakhen,’ I said to the demon, my tone nonchalant and imperious — something I’d learned from Tarashak. ‘But I will take everyone.’

  ‘Everyone, my lord? Not just those with the highest levels?’ the overseer asked, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Everyone. Every resident of this city, man, woman or child, young and old, who meets the minimum level requirement to join, will join my army. And that is just the first part of my plan.’ I announced loudly so everyone could hear.

  ‘The … first part?’ The overseer and my general asked at the same time.

  ‘Yes. The first part,’ I said, then I stepped away from the town delegation to have a better look at what lay beyond the gate. A crowd of demons were gathering between the gate and the first row of buildings, all looking and listening to the ongoings.

  I had studied the menus, the maps, I had asked Button as well as Burning Darkness a ton of questions during our two day trek to here. I knew what things were in my power as the ruler of this ring of Hell, knew what I could get away with and what I couldn’t. I had adjusted my plan again and again and again, and this was as good as it was going to get. And now, it was finally time to make my debut as the proper and rightful ruling demon lord of the Fourth Ring of Hell.

  ‘As of this moment, Demon Lord Ugrathar’s Scorching Castle of Unimaginable Power and Suffering is no longer the Centre of the Ring and no longer the Seat of the Ruling Demon Lord’s power.’ I announced it to everyone present, cranking up my helmet’s PA. ‘That honour now belongs to Scaragar.’

  And while all the yellow, glowing eyes widened and all demonic jaws dropped to the floor, I got into my RMS and revoked all titles and perks from Ugrathar’s stupidly named castle, and re-assigned all of it to Scaragar, and then some more.