Chapter 39: Growth and the Temple of Sin

"That’s..."

"Flyers?!"

Mirela stared toward the gate in shock.

Near the gate, ten hideous creatures were pouring out into the sky. Each had two or three pairs of wings and a mouth like a sandworm’s.

Their skin was a strange bronze color, covered in light, hollow scales.

Worse still, sharp spurs jutted from their backs like broken spear shafts.

Even in flight, their greedy scarlet eyes kept sweeping over everything below.

Each one was nearly as long as a grown centaur, and their wings beat with a dry, rattling sound, like bones knocking together in a sack.

"Raulth Demons?"

Mirela recognized them from the bestiaries she’d been made to memorize at Blackspire.

She couldn’t remember much detail, but she could tell at once that these were different from everything the deep had thrown out so far.

"Wait, they’re that fast? And they’re seventh-tier spawn?"

Raulth Demons.

They were the first flyers Koda had raised from his pool.

They were also the only flyers in the pool that didn’t need any special materials or special ground to raise.

The next flyer up, the eleventh-tier Rime Demon, could only be raised once Koda built a second pool in some frozen corner of Hell.

Either way, the moment these flyers appeared, Mirela sensed danger.

"!" "!"

As soon as the first Raulths cleared the gate, they split into five pairs, just the way Koda liked his squads.

Each pair flew off in a different direction toward the targets Koda had set for them.

And one of those pairs was flying straight toward Mirela.

It was no coincidence.

The sparrow she had been riding during the centaur escape had stood out far too much. Koda had already guessed that some third party was meddling in his hold on the Tithe Lands.

He barely needed to think about it. Some other new lord in the Claiming had found a way to reach the Tithe Lands early.

And whoever it was, they meant him harm!

"Found you, you damned little rat!"

Deep in the Third Layer, Koda grinned savagely as he locked onto Mirela’s sparrow through the Raulths’ eyes.

Raulths didn’t see like ordinary creatures. They saw the world normally, but they could also see the heat of living bodies.

No matter how the sparrow twisted and dodged through the forest, its tiny body couldn’t escape the Raulths watching from above!

And in a race, the Raulths, born hunters, were many times faster than a little sparrow!

"Where do you think you’re going?"

Codex in hand, Koda ordered the two Raulths to close in from the left and the right and pin the sparrow between them.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

As their claws drew closer, Mirela’s eyes flickered, and she gave up resisting.

’Nothing I can do,’ she thought.

’They’re far too fast. This body’s lost.’

’What a shame. It suited my mind perfectly.’

With that, she steeled herself and forcibly cut the link between her mind and the sparrow.

The undead had their own kind of possession, one that cared only about the body and not the soul. A druid’s was more complicated.

The body had to fit certain forms druids could take, and it had to carry a soul that resonated much like the druid’s own.

That was because druid possession was really a kind of lopsided sharing of eyes and thoughts.

If one side died during the possession, the other would be hurt too.

The undead version was more like twisted body-theft.

The famous phylacteries of the liches were the most advanced use of it.

In short, once this sparrow died, it would be a real hassle for Mirela to sneak back onto the Tithe Lands to spy on Koda’s progress.

But at this point, she had no choice.

The next second, the poor sparrow, possessed for so long, finally woke up and got its freedom back.

But that hard-won freedom didn’t even last two seconds before a pair of large, sharp-clawed hands crushed it in their grip.

The last thing it saw was a huge, bloody, gaping mouth!

"..."

"It’s over. Did I drive it off?"

Through his demons’ eyes, Koda could tell the lord who had interfered with him had lost their eyes in this world.

The Tithe Lands were safe again.

But only for now.

"Thanks to that pest, my progress got interrupted. I’m a lot further behind than I planned."

Sitting on the throne, Koda looked over the ground he’d mapped so far and frowned.

Because of Mirela, his original plan to expand had stalled.

Worse, to hold this region more safely, he’d had to stop raising large numbers of Imps and Lesser Demons and spend a fortune on this batch of seventh-tier Raulths instead.

’Then again, in a way, it’s a good thing,’ he thought.

’That pest proved one thing to me. Out on the Tithe Lands, I have to watch out for other lords at every step.’

’Even if they can’t send armies through yet, they have countless ways to mess with me.’

’So I need to change how I expand. I can’t keep throwing cheap, weak Imps forward without thinking.’

With that, a plan came to him.

He went to the throne, the heart of his territory.

He spent five thousand soul stones, and his territory grew for the second time.

The ground shuddered under the throne. A ring of dull red light raced outward across the cracked plain, much farther than the first time, before it faded into the dust.

The knowledge settled into him through the throne, the way it always did.

His territory had grown.

Its borders had spread outward.

He could now raise a second pool and a second gate.

And he could raise a new kind of structure.

The Temple of Sin.

There could only ever be one. It would cost fifteen thousand soul stones.

Koda’s fingers tightened on the Codex.

Until now, every order had come from him alone. Every squad, every turn, every sacrifice.

The Temple of Sin could do one thing.

Call forth a champion of the demon race!