Chapter 29: Spoils and the Druid

"Wuwuwu! Waaah!"

A wild Bogfin was surrounded by a pack of Lesser Imps.

As it screamed in agony, one of its arms was torn off and stuffed straight into the mouth of an impatient Imp.

Another Imp beside it desperately tried to stop it. Even so, the first one managed to swallow the hard-won arm.

But don’t misunderstand.

The second Imp wasn’t trying to stop its companion out of kindness.

It just wanted the plump, juicy fish-man arm for itself!

Watching the treat it had been eyeing for so long get snatched away, it flew into a rage.

Burning with fury, it grudgingly settled for another part of its prey.

The Bogfin’s still-beating heart.

And so, while the Bogfin struggled uselessly, the second Imp shoved its heart into its mouth with a nasty grin.

Farther off, countless other Bogfins were suffering the same fate.

There, the Lesser Demons were butchering the Bogfins who had rushed over to help.

Each Bogfin was actually a little tougher than an Imp or even a Lesser Demon, but they had one big problem.

There were far more demons than there were Bogfins in the whole tribe!

Every last member of the swamp-dwelling tribe was slaughtered.

The Imps burned their reed huts to the ground, and the mangled corpses were hauled back through the gate to the Third Layer.

Along with the bodies, the demons brought back a few rare materials the Bogfins had kept, and a single piece of gear dug out of the chieftain’s hut.

From what he knew, gear wasn’t only for lords.

A lord could wear it, of course, but so could his champions and commanders. In fact, any ordinary soldier strong enough to bear it could use it too.

It wasn’t even that rare, out in the Tithe Lands or anywhere else.

Tribal villages like the Bogfins’, beast dens, haunted graveyards; places like that often hoarded whatever had wandered in over the years, and clearing them out could turn something up.

Unfortunately, most of it was junk.

"Stinking Bogfin boots..."

Koda looked at the pair of slimy, half-rotten boots and frowned.

The next second, he pinched his nose and tossed them onto the Sacrificial Altar.

The altar took them without complaint, and a small handful of soul stones rattled out in return.

Koda’s expression relaxed considerably.

"Finally, that’s one problem solved."

"I was completely dry. At least something’s coming in again."

He had poured every bit of his spare essence into waking the pool and raising his first army.

He had started with half again as much as most claimants would, but it still hadn’t been nearly enough.

He’d barely managed a few hundred Imps and a hundred Lesser Demons before he ran dry.

Fortunately, it had been the right call.

"Right now, there isn’t a single rival on the Tithe Lands who can get in my way."

"My army can make the most of that. We go after the dens most likely to be hiding something good, mark every place worth coming back to, and stretch this lead as far as it’ll go."

"I’m not exactly good at managing resources, but as long as I hold on to this early lead, that should be enough."

"After all, the real show hasn’t even started yet."

With that, Koda gave no more thought to the slaughtered Bogfin tribe and ordered his army on to the next place he had marked.

A goblin den with a strange statue inside it.

However, he wasn’t the only one watching his army move.

High above the demons, out of their sight, a gray sparrow was flying hard toward a distant grassland.

Because something there could slow Koda’s expansion down, at least for a while.

"Damn it! What is going on?"

"Whose army is that? How did they get into the Tithe Lands so fast?"

Up in the sky, Mirela Thorne muttered in confusion.

Her true body wasn’t on the Tithe Lands at all. The sparrow was only a puppet she had taken over with the Soulperch, a twisted druidic rite.

Unlike most new claimants, Mirela had been rather lucky.

As a druid, she had planted her Seed on the layer’s living fringe, far from any dead plain, and right beside a tribe of Forest Elves who were fairly friendly toward druids.

The Forest Elves were obsessed with beauty. When they met Mirela, a woman whose looks and bearing were both exceptional, they welcomed her warmly.

And since druids and Forest Elves both drew their power from nature, the tribe had given her a gift.

That gift was the Soulperch.

With it, Mirela could reach across realms and slip directly into the body of any natural creature living there.

At first, she hadn’t thought much of it. Twisted druid rites could already be bought from the brokers in any decent market.

The friendly but incredibly stingy elves had only saved her a few thousand soul stones.

And in a world where armies of tens or even hundreds of thousands became normal later on, a few thousand soul stones was practically nothing.

Even so, she’d had to spend a long time trading flirtatious glances with several single male elves to get it.

Now, though, she finally understood how valuable it was.

She had meant to use it only to scout the Tithe Lands early. Instead, she had found something extremely dangerous.

It was only the second day of the Claiming, and she had been horrified to find that some new lord had already gotten his army into the Tithe Lands!

"Who is he? Seline Ashgrove, the one famous for managing resources? Corvin Hale, who’s obsessed with building up his territory? Or maybe..."

She paused, then shook her head.

"Forget it. Whoever he is, I have to stop him from spreading."

"The Tithe Lands are only so big. I can’t let him take every important early prize without a fight."

"After all, the Claiming isn’t just about fighting and killing. Planning and strategy matter just as much!"

She had no idea who this new lord was.

But as she had once said herself, every new lord trying to survive the Claiming would instinctively treat every other new lord as an enemy.

An enemy to the death.

And so, Mirela came up with a plan.

She would win over one of the native races of the Tithe Lands and use its strength against Koda, whose expansion was becoming unstoppable.

That race was the scattered centaur tribes of the grasslands!

Even the weakest of their warriors was stronger than anything Koda had raised so far.

As the curtain rose on a chaotic war that had only just begun, the centaurs might become the first force able to tip the balance of the Tithe Lands.