Chapter 201: Universal values
Chapter 201: Universal values
The stick wasn’t doing it. What was there besides the stick? Right, a carrot. Enforcers worked for the Master of Sin (and by extension, me) because he fed them and hosted them and cared for the comfort of their living, so they didn’t have to.
Meanwhile, I kicked asses of the demons who thought that in the absence of the Master of Sin, they could try to sit on his throne. Which was mine now, for as long as I stayed in this wretched place. What there was in my hands that I could offer to Enforcers?
I scanned their thoughts for an answer. While being let into the mortal realm was just as enticing for them as for any other demon, their knowledge of it was so blurry, and their imagination so bleak, that they knew nothing else about it but that everything is absolutely amazing up there. Even the existence of it was such an abstract concept for the quartet that they had a hard time truly believing in it.
This where my problem was. Enforcers needed something solid, something they could understand… And I had an idea now. It would’ve worked on me, so why won’t it work on them? We all were simple creatures in our core. Demons.
I gathered them on our training ground again, and watched them try, and fail, not fall into my webs. Enforcers were pretty frustrated with their poor results in memorising their position, but they weren’t of the sort that let frustration besmirch their efforts. An outstanding quality—stubbornness. But they needed more passion, too.
“Alright, that’s enough!” I clapped my hands when Scythe tripped, for the third time, on the same web. “Scythe, what’s wrong with your memory? You should’ve been able to overstep it with your eyes closed by now! I can’t imagine how many webs I would’ve needed to fix if I didn’t replace them with not-sticky ones after your first attempts…”
Scythe grit his teeth and went to the edge of the trapped zone. Tremble gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“You are the boss, Devourer, but this doesn’t give you the right to treat us like shit,” Kuut snarled at me at their expense. Not that his successes in memorising the field were much better. “If you can’t bear looking at our failures, then go somewhere else. We will train on our own!”
A tempting offer. Really… I had things to do, and Enforcers would do fine on their own in the not-sticky webs. They were too strong to snap, too.
“Sure. This I will do. In the meantime…” I counted the days in my head, using my character sheet as a calendar. There were eleven days left until the arrival of God of Monks. “Whoever learns the placement of the webs in a week’s time well enough to fight in here will get a special reward. When I kill God of Monks… I will give them some of his meat to eat.” I licked my lips, grinning from the memory alone. “Divine flesh… it doesn’t taste the same as that of anyone else. It’s filled with magic to the brim.”
At the mere mention of food, the eyes of Enforcers brightened with excitement and hunger. Oh, they were fed well enough, but a demon always hungers.
“Really? I mean… This means we just have to get this stuff!” Tremble clenched her fists. “Devourer, please, tell us more about how gods taste.”
“Are they sweet? I heard they are sweet.” Kuut swallowed. “I heard from the Master of Sin’s harem girls that sweet is the best taste of all, but there’s nothing sweet in Hell.”
“It’s not sweet, but it’s better than sweet. It’s extremely soft, softer than that of any fresh soul, and tingles a little on your tongue. Just enough to be pleasant. Then, there’s that energy to it…” I tried to find the words for the experience that was in my memory, and failed. “It’s indescribable.”
I didn’t need to read Enforcers’ thoughts to see the enthusiasm my words lit in them. It was written on their faces. I flicked my wrist. “Enough of daydreaming. You know what you have to do if you want to try it out.”
I left the quartet at that and returned to Dis. First thing I did was checking up with the city’s steward and asking for the fate of the messengers I sent to the upper circles.
There was no word from them yet, or from the Master of Sin, to that matter. It didn’t mean that they were all dead or strangled far away, though. The Abyss was tall—so tall that my mental projection could only go two levels up or down—and with the flight devices’ approximate speed, getting up and down might take a couple of days, if not all four. Really, it was too early to ask.
Still, I didn’t feel good about depending on messengers that were put into the flight devices by force with notes attached. The best decision would’ve been to fly to Limbo myself. Enforcers would hold the fort in Dis in the meantime, and I could go up, spread the news and return in a day, if I hurried.
Yes, this was it. As much as I didn’t want to Limbo, it was necessary. Limbo had the strongest, the biggest, the baddest demons of all places, except for Cocytus.
Since there was no day or night in Hell, and the only measurement of the passage of time was the count of days in people’s character sheets, I didn’t need to wait for anything. I simply gave the steward orders on what to do in my absence: accept any who wish to help me as guests, feed Enforcers, if anyone tries to take over Dis—sick Enforcers on them, and so on.
Then I walked on the edge of the Abyss. There, an endless, if thin, stream of falling people was barely visible in the smoke. Netters and harpooners tirelessly threw out their tools, trying to catch as many as they could and move them, screaming and trashing, for butchering.
I spread my wings and flew.