Chapter 680

Haimengdasi might have been universally disliked and almost completely useless at actually governing his territory, but that didn’t mean he lacked loyal followers.

Far from it.

The Burning Legion’s armies were built around vast numbers of demons such as Felguards, Wrathguards, and Doomguards. They shared a few defining traits: brutality, bloodlust, and an alarming shortage of brains.

Which made them a perfect match for Haimengdasi.

To these demons, his enormous head, reckless nature, and sheer stupidity weren’t weaknesses. They were virtues. His brutal treatment of his subordinates wasn’t evidence of poor leadership, either. They saw it as proof of strength and authority.

And within Fel Scar Rift, Haimengdasi really was the strongest.

So they had become his fanatical loyalists.

Of course, their loyalty came with one very important condition.

Haimengdasi had to remain the strongest.

As long as he was on top, they would follow him without question. The moment someone knocked him off that throne, however, their loyalty would evaporate along with his reputation.

Demons weren’t particularly concerned with fair fights, either. Ambushes, poison, traps, dirty tricks, outright conspiracies... anything went.

Their philosophy was remarkably simple.

Strength was whatever remained standing.

So once Haimengdasi was dead, his followers would naturally transfer their allegiance to whoever proved stronger. If Evanson put Agatha, the second-strongest demon in Fel Scar Rift, at the head of the rebellion, they would probably bow on the spot and start calling her their new master.

The problem was getting Haimengdasi killed in the first place.

For that, his loyal forces had to be weakened first.

Agatha had already begun.

At the Eredar Twins’ urging, she had started purging Haimengdasi’s forces under the convenient banner of enforcing military discipline. Demons were being executed in large numbers.

It served two purposes.

It reduced the number of troops loyal to Haimengdasi while simultaneously building Agatha’s reputation as a ruthless and terrifying leader, laying the groundwork for her eventual rise to power.

A more politically astute ruler would have noticed immediately.

If his second-in-command suddenly started executing his personal troops by the dozens, there was obviously something going on.

Haimengdasi, however, possessed roughly the political awareness of a brick.

Worse, he’d spent so long stationed in the remote backwater of Fel Scar Rift without a proper war to occupy him that what little brainpower he possessed had apparently congealed.

When Agatha first began the purge, she still dutifully reported every execution to him.

She would wait until Haimengdasi had just fallen asleep, wake him, and explain what had happened.

For the first few times, Haimengdasi at least attempted to perform his duties as lord.

"Idiots. All of them."

But Agatha hadn’t even made it to the sixth report before he finally snapped.

"You’re waking me up for this garbage?! What exactly do I keep you around for? Handle it yourself from now on! I’m going back to sleep!"

For Agatha, those words were practically a royal decree.

Why wouldn’t she take full advantage of them?

That same day, she announced that Haimengdasi had granted her complete authority over military and political affairs.

Claire’s expression became increasingly strange as she listened.

"Well, thank goodness this Haimengdasi is actually strong," she said. "Otherwise, at this rate, we’d be watching him get locked out of his own palace and starve to death. Or maybe he’d die in some suspicious ’accident’ involving a lake."

"That’s true."

Sacrolash smiled and nodded.

"From what I know of Agatha, if she weren’t physically incapable of beating Haimengdasi, she’d have chopped him into pieces a long time ago."

Claire nodded emphatically before turning to Evanson.

"Now that Agatha has permission to act without consulting him, I doubt she’ll stop at executions. Her next move will probably be breaking up the troops loyal to Haimengdasi and sending them to the outer reaches of Fel Scar Rift."

She paused.

"And she’ll probably divide them into small detachments so they can’t regroup quickly if something happens."

"Smart."

Alythess gave Claire a rare look of approval.

"Looks like you’re not completely clueless about political maneuvering after all."

"Oh, please."

Claire covered her mouth with one hand and laughed.

"I intend to become the Shadow Supreme someday. The guardian lurking in Kamar-Taj’s darkness, the root buried deep beneath the earth. Obviously I can’t afford to be completely ignorant."

"Right..."

Alythess’s mouth twitched.

She leaned toward Evanson and muttered, "Pretend I never complimented her."

The moment Claire received an inch of praise, she apparently intended to build a house on it.

"Back to reality."

Evanson clapped his hands, dragging Claire’s attention back.

"My plan goes further than that. Agatha is having fun over there, so I figured I’d better do my part over here."

"Oh?"

Claire tilted her head.

"What are you planning to do?"

"It’s not what I’m planning to do."

Evanson’s expression became faintly smug.

"It’s what I’ve already done."

Claire narrowed her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Where do you think all those demons we summoned earlier came from?"

The answer was obvious.

The demons Evanson had been using as raw material for his experiments had all come from Fel Scar Rift.

Summoning demons from the Twisting Nether was practically routine for a Warlock. Normally, however, the process was random. A summoned demon could come from virtually anywhere.

But the Eredar Twins were another matter.

With their status and power, selectively calling demons from a specific location wasn’t impossible.

And they had Agatha’s cooperation.

Agatha was already executing and dispersing Haimengdasi’s forces, but Evanson hadn’t considered that secure enough.

So he had asked the Eredar Twins to specifically summon their demons from Fel Scar Rift.

Every time.

And once those demons arrived in this world and were killed, their souls were collected as well.

There was no chance of them resurrecting and carrying the information back.

The result was beautifully efficient.

Fel Scar Rift lost more of its militant forces.

Evanson’s own army gained more troops to fight it.

The balance shifted in both directions at once.

Enemy numbers went down.

His numbers went up.

That was how war worked, after all.

And Evanson wasn’t finished.

Once the Hydra soldiers had completed their transformations, they would need combat training.

For that, he planned to summon another batch of demons from Fel Scar Rift and use them as live training targets.

His soldiers would gain experience.

The Burning Legion would lose more troops.

Everyone benefited.

Well, almost everyone.

That was why the Eredar Twins had called the plan killing two birds with one stone from the very beginning.

"The plan is certainly effective..."

Claire nodded after hearing the whole thing.

Then her expression shifted.

"But isn’t this getting a little excessive? Haimengdasi’s loyal troops are disappearing at an incredible rate. Is he really so stupid that he hasn’t noticed?"

"Manoroth can count to one hundred."

Sacrolash suddenly offered the completely unrelated statement.

Claire stared at her.

Manoroth the Destructor was one of the Burning Legion’s greatest commanders, surpassed only by the two Eredar leaders.

And he hadn’t reached that position through brute strength alone.

The strongest Pit Lords were already fairly comparable in raw power. Even Magtheridon and Brutallus could exchange blows with Manoroth.

What separated Manoroth from the rest was that he was both powerful and intelligent.

In fact, he was exceptionally intelligent.

He could count all the way to one hundred.

And rumor had it he could even understand Reader’s Digest and other similarly sophisticated literature.

For a Pit Lord, that qualified as unprecedented genius.

Possibly unsurpassed genius.

"So if even Manoroth is considered brilliant by Pit Lord standards," Sacrolash continued, "then Haimengdasi doesn’t exactly have much to worry about in the intelligence department."

Claire blinked.

Evanson sighed.

Haimengdasi’s concept of numbers apparently stopped somewhere around thirty.

As far as he was concerned, a troop formation was simply a troop formation.

It could lose a few soldiers.

It could lose a few hundred.

It could lose a few thousand.

As long as the survivors stood far enough apart when they lined up in front of him, he would never notice the missing pieces.

The entire army could practically vanish under his nose, and Haimengdasi would probably just squint at the formation and wonder why everyone looked so spread out.

For once, Evanson’s plan had found an enemy who was uniquely qualified to make it work.

...