Chapter 671

Felguards and Wrathguards were the backbone of the Burning Legion’s armies, the soldiers sent ahead when the Legion marched to conquer another world. They were also among the strongest demons a Warlock could summon and keep around indefinitely.

That meant they tended to develop a certain attitude.

"You insignificant mortal."

"Have you forgotten how to fight?"

Warlocks heard that sort of thing all the time. And yet, whenever they needed muscle, they still eagerly summoned the same demons again and again.

The reason was simple.

They were strong, durable, and extremely useful.

After enough years of this arrangement, both sides had grown accustomed to it. Warlocks had developed their own interpretation of demonic insults, while demons had developed their own interpretation of Warlock behavior.

A Felguard calling someone an "insignificant mortal" was practically the classic example of a demon whose mouth said one thing while its actions said another.

From the demons’ perspective, meanwhile, Warlocks were a bunch of deranged masochists who seemed to enjoy being insulted and threatened.

So when the demons answered this particular summons, none of them thought anything was unusual.

In fact, some were downright excited. It had been a long time since they had been summoned.

That excitement lasted until they actually arrived.

Something was wrong.

For one thing, the Warlock who had supposedly summoned them was nowhere to be seen. Neither was there any enemy waiting for them.

For another...

There were a lot of demons.

Felguards and Wrathguards looked around at the assembled ranks, weapons already in hand.

Could this be some kind of selection process?

Perhaps the summoner intended to choose the strongest among them and establish a contract with the winner.

The thought occurred to several demons at once.

And Felguards and Wrathguards were not the sort to spend much time thinking before acting. Sometimes their weapons moved faster than their brains.

Steel flashed.

They immediately raised their weapons, intending to cut down the demons beside them and claim the contract for themselves.

Demons were not exactly famous for camaraderie. Among the Legion’s more martial breeds, killing an ally at the right moment was hardly unusual.

Except...

Their weapons stopped halfway through the swing.

Every demon froze.

Their bodies had become completely unresponsive.

Then a cold mechanical voice echoed through the chamber.

"Summoning ritual complete. Summoned targets are in position. Initiating extermination procedure."

"Extermination procedure selected: soul extraction."

"Executing."

The demons had been far too simple-minded to notice the containment arrays covering the chamber.

Even if they had noticed them, there was a fair chance none of them would have recognized what they were.

The soul-extraction magic activated.

Just as it had with the humans sacrificed to bring them here, the magic tore the demons’ souls from their bodies.

Ten demons had answered the summons.

Not one of them got to enjoy the slaughter they had been expecting.

They died before they even discovered who their enemy was.

For a demon, soul extraction was perhaps the most terrifying death imaginable.

Ordinary death was temporary.

No matter how brutally a demon was destroyed outside the Twisting Nether, its soul would eventually return to the Nether and be reborn in Antorus.

But if the soul itself was destroyed...

There was no return.

No resurrection.

No second life.

Nothing.

Peggy Carter watched the entire process with a mixture of fascination and disbelief.

"I’ve always heard that demons are supposed to be cunning," she said. "I didn’t realize they were quite this easy to fool."

She could tell that the demons had been formidable. If all ten had attacked her together, she suspected she would have had a very difficult fight on her hands.

Instead, they had been processed like livestock headed for the slaughterhouse.

Evenson shook his head.

"Humans have a bad habit of lumping demons and devils together in their stories. Though, to be fair, there really are demons who are exceptionally devious and—"

He stopped.

The Eredar Twins were staring at him.

Their expressions were distinctly unfriendly.

Evenson immediately corrected himself.

"...beautiful and intelligent."

The twins nodded with satisfaction.

"However," Evenson continued, "Felguards and Wrathguards obviously aren’t members of that particular group. Their brains are perfectly functional, but judging by how they behave, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between them and someone who’d misplaced the majority of their common sense."

"I see."

Peggy nodded thoughtfully.

She wasn’t reassured.

If anything, the demons had become more frightening in her eyes.

Everyone knew a zombie had no brain. That didn’t make a zombie horde harmless. When thousands of them came pouring down the street like a living tide, it was usually the humans who ended up retreating, cornered, and eventually eaten.

These demons were similar.

They weren’t good at thinking, which meant they didn’t know fear.

They didn’t negotiate.

They didn’t surrender.

They didn’t second-guess orders or reinterpret them to suit themselves.

They simply obeyed.

A creature that could not think for itself might be stupid, but that also made it brutally reliable.

And if enough of these living weapons were gathered into one army...

Peggy’s eyes drifted toward the Eredar Twins.

If demons like them were placed in command of an army like that...

She didn’t even want to imagine the result.

"But why did you summon and kill all of them?" Peggy asked. She still didn’t understand what Evenson’s plan was.

"You’ll see."

Evenson gave her a deliberately vague answer.

Then he added, "Though I should warn you. You probably shouldn’t watch the next part."

Peggy snorted.

"I’ve seen plenty of things in my life. There isn’t much left that can scare me."

"Suit yourself."

Evenson shrugged.

Then he remembered something.

"Oh, and don’t throw away their armor or weapons."

The equipment of ordinary Legion soldiers probably wasn’t going to produce anything particularly impressive. Given his own bloodline, Evenson certainly wasn’t expecting to find some miraculous purple-quality gear among them.

But the equipment should still be worth something.

At minimum, blue or green quality.

He’d been worrying about how to level his Enchanting skill. Now he suddenly had a mountain of raw materials to work with.

And if his Enchanting wasn’t high enough to disenchant the equipment?

Fine.

He could melt it down and use it to level Blacksmithing.

And if his Blacksmithing wasn’t high enough either...

Well.

He could always sell the metal to NASA.

He’d just claim he’d recovered it from some extraterrestrial meteorite. NASA would probably pay an absurd amount for alien metal.

And who knew?

Maybe they’d even designate his company as an official partner.

Government funding sounded pretty good.

While Evenson was contemplating his increasingly ambitious plans for monetizing demonic corpses, the floor of the chamber below suddenly shifted.

The scattered bodies of the demons were moved into position.

One by one, they were neatly arranged in a row.

Then something descended from the ceiling.

Huge mechanical arms extended into the chamber. At the end of each arm was a device resembling an enormous egg beater.

The mechanisms lowered toward the demons’ chests.

Then, with a sharp mechanical snap, the devices split apart.

The egg-beater-like ends transformed into mechanical claws.

The claws closed around each demon’s chest.

A moment later, they spun.

Crunch.

The claws plunged inward and ripped out the demons’ hearts.

The walls opened at precisely the same moment.

A series of trays extended outward, catching the still-twitching hearts and carrying them away.

With that, the chamber’s work was essentially complete.

Only the demon corpses remained to be dealt with.

And Evenson’s real purpose for all of this had finally begun.