Chapter 28: The Nature of Demons

The Lesser Imps weren’t the only ones putting on a grand show of cannibalism in front of Koda.

Not far away, the Lesser Demons he had raised were fighting too, tearing one another apart and eating whoever fell.

By the time Koda turned his attention to them, the creatures, nearly twice the size of the Imps, had already ripped one of their own apart with their tentacles and finished off the remains.

Even worse, the Lesser Demons weren’t satisfied with eating their own kind.

The Imps, known across Hell as fodder, were on the menu too!

"Roar!"

"Wuwu!"

Scream after scream rang out as the Lesser Demons went looking for Imps to fill their stomachs.

The second batch of Imps hadn’t even had time to copy the first batch and start eating each other before they became food themselves!

Flesh was torn away. Blood was lapped up eagerly.

One Imp shrieked as a Lesser Demon grabbed it and slammed it against the ground.

No matter how hard it struggled, it couldn’t break free.

The Lesser Demons weren’t just bigger than the Imps. They were stronger, too!

The Imp’s dimming eyes were full of pain, and of refusal to accept what was happening.

For the Lesser Demon, though, every second of it was pure pleasure.

That was because demons were fundamentally different from other races.

When they hunted, it wasn’t only to fill their bellies.

What they truly lived for was spreading suffering, destroying everything they could reach, and tasting the fear in another creature’s eyes!

That was what these things were.

They were born deviants, bastards, slavers, and madmen!

At first, Koda had assumed they were eating each other because they’d been born starving.

After all, the Imps had crawled out of their cocoons like hungry ghosts out of their graves.

So he took the leftover flesh he’d been saving for the next batch, enough to feed the dozen or so Imps and Lesser Demons for two days, and split it among them.

He also used the throne’s authority to order them to keep their distance from each other, and forbade them from eating their own kind.

Unfortunately, it only held for a while.

What happened next was astonishing.

The vast majority of the demons didn’t hesitate at all. They wolfed down their whole share in one sitting.

Then they immediately started snatching food from anyone who still had some left!

Even with their stomachs so full they could barely swallow another bite, they kept eyeing anything they could grab.

An endless desire, like a curse, kept driving these lowest, most despicable creatures to take more.

What? Did that "vast majority" mean a few of them had actually behaved?

Sorry, but those few were a hundred times worse.

They had simply hidden their own share, then gone around stealing everyone else’s!

"..."

Koda quickly understood something about demons.

Feeding them could only slow down how fast they killed each other.

As long as they had no shared goal, and as long as more than one of them was alive, they would keep fighting until only one was left standing.

However, the slaughter wasn’t completely pointless.

Through the throne, Koda could feel it. Every demon that ate another came out a little stronger. Sometimes only barely, sometimes by a lot.

The more of their kind they ate, the bigger the gain.

In other words, these ugly, shameless little bastards were actually evolving, one corpse at a time.

’It’s the same thing I do,’ Koda thought with a slight frown. ’Just cruder.’

For him, it was both good news and bad news.

The good news was that his troops had real potential.

The bad news was that if they kept evolving like this, his Claiming would be over before it even started!

"Everyone, stay where you are! No more eating each other!"

Through the throne, Koda forced the Imps and the Lesser Demons apart and kept them at a distance. Then he slowly led them toward the gate.

That was when he discovered another big trait of demons.

How they obeyed their lord.

Like every other race, demons had to obey the absolute commands of the one whose blood had planted their Seed.

That was the law of the Seed.

It held for every race.

But demons were different in one particular way.

They always seemed to find a way to... misunderstand their orders.

On purpose or by accident, they twisted their lord’s commands into excuses for petty little crimes.

For example, sneaking a bite out of an Imp when no one was looking.

Or waiting until Koda was distracted, then giving a demon who had offended them earlier a thorough beating.

In short, as far as most races and their lords were concerned, demons had no such thing as discipline.

"No, this won’t work. It’s still a little early for the Tithe Lands, but I don’t have a choice."

"If I keep waiting, I might only have one demon left by the time I get around to it."

With that, Koda used his authority as lord to wake the long-sealed gate. Through the throne, he could already feel where it wanted to lead; straight toward the land the vortex had dropped into the layer.

"Rather than let them hold some pointless battle royale in my territory, I might as well send them out to gather something useful."

The Tithe Lands held more than riches. When the vortex tore that land loose, its native beasts had come with it.

Those beasts could provide the flesh needed to hatch more Imps, along with all kinds of valuable materials.

So Koda planned to sneak in a round of hunting while the other claimants were still busy building up their territories and raising their own gates.

As in countless other worlds, one of the oldest laws of the Tithe Lands was that the total amount of riches was usually fixed.

But the number of those trying to take them kept growing!

Why was that law so terrifying?

Beyond what it meant on its own, there was another reason.

It always brought schemes, plots, and conflict with it. In the end, it always led to wars that slaughtered and destroyed everything in their path.

Every sensible race tried to avoid the wars that could destroy it, and chose only the wars that could make it stronger.

To them, war was only a means to an end. Never the end itself.

But for certain races, and certain individuals, war meant something very different.

For one particular race, war was how it kept itself alive.

For one particular individual, war was his only pleasure, and his only purpose.

As the dark-red and black gate swung open, one demon after another walked through it.

Koda couldn’t help but smile.

The Tithe Lands had finally received their first guest.

Elsewhere, on the Tithe Lands, someone had noticed what he was doing.

"What is going on? Someone opened a gate on the very first day of the Claiming? How is that even possible?"

A sparrow sat on a tree branch, watching the distant gate open, a gate that looked like a sign of disaster and ruin.

Its eyes were filled with fear and confusion.