Death's Door

This made getting to other territories much simpler. In order to expand his reach, Dark Lord bid all of the Shadow Lords to travel to each corner of Holy City and mark many places with teleportation seals. They were to cover not just Tracoa territory but the other two as well.

While goblins were able to mark many places for teleportation, because they could not afford to be seen until their numbers increase, the places they marked were rather limited. Dark Lord preferred if the marked areas were in highly populated places. This is why, Shadow Lords, two of whom are human and demi-human respectively were perfect for the job. Unlike the demon members of the Shadow Lords had to have spell of Concealment cast upon them by Camilla.

Thus each of the Shadow Lords marked many locations within Holy City for teleportation purposes. Critical locations were the locations of the n.o.bles" territories and knights" residences. There were around hundred thousand knights within Holy City, but only about hundred of them were high ranking Holy Knights, and less than thirty were Heroes, the highest of the high. They will be the perfect prey for hunting down.

Just within a few days, Dark Lord"s hunting grounds were expanded exponentially, now he was not limited to the Tracoa territory, but had an access to the entire Holy City.

It seems forming Shadow Lords was a good idea, they can take care of so many things than Camilla and I alone….Not to mention they, unlike goblins would not stand out….

Speaking of goblins, their daily exploits of ambushing women and taking them to their nests have proved to be extremely successful. Within a month, they have acquired more than fifty women; each chained up and held within a nest for breeding. Their numbers have risen from forty to eighty, and it keeps rising daily with each captive female giving birth to more goblins.

Dark Lord bid the goblins to leave no trace of the rookie adventurers, which is why the adventurer"s guild currently has no idea why so many rookies started disappearing. As a former mercenary, Meros was occasionally sent to the adventurer"s guild to check what exactly they knew about disappearances.

As expected, they had no clue. Most thought that there might be rogue demi-humans who have tasted human flesh or monsters on the loose, thus they kept more and more adventurers to investigate, not knowing that is exactly what Dark Lord intended.

Goblins have evolved rather dramatically, the first ten Dark Lord subjugated have become extremely strong, their bodies have absorbed strengths of those they ate, he was confident that now each one of them could face a human knight and emerge victorious. However, against higher ranking Holy Knights, they were still not a match, but in a few months….that would change as well.

As for the goblins offspring, because they inherit the powers of their mothers, their talents were better than their predecessors, the fact that many of them had magic affinities was a clear success. Now each one trained in becoming stronger by hunting down prey at night, while using his inherited magic powers; thus becoming stronger with each confrontation. They started hunting since five days after their birth, starting with rabbits, then foxes, then wolves….and after some time, they started hunting monsters.

Of course, the fact remained that because Dark Lord made contract with their ancestors, he had complete control over them as well, the unique contract he made with them ensured that all of their descendants would be his loyal and obedient va.s.sals, no matter how many generations.

As such, Dark Lord could mentally communicate with each and every goblin and keep track of their location using the contract, but managing such a large number with mental message alone would be c.u.mbersome, so he let Goblin Captain handle it, with him being their leader while the other original nine were his lieutenants.

It was a very efficient system.

Camilla kept providing his shed scales every now and then, which also made things easier for goblins, many of whom acquired ability of camouflage due to it. Granted, their ability was far inferior to Camilla"s absolute concealment, but it was very useful nevertheless.

Entering the private room within the mansion, with Camilla already waiting there, Dark Lord dropped his disguise and addressed his subordinate.

"It seems everything is going well."

"Yes, everything is going well, so far…But milord, I don"t understand on thing…if you want to have many subordinates, how are you going to finance them?"

"Pardon?"

"You hired many people recently, and you even said that Shadow Lords are paid, but combined with the pay that the mansion staff receive…I understand Augustus Sevilles was not exactly poor, but with such spending, just how long can you maintain it?"

"Ah, about that, I already have it covered."

"You do?"

"Indeed. Follow me."

Now putting on his mask and Camilla cast an illusion on him to appear human, both proceeded to head towards a certain room which is currently used as a temporary treasury.

"Do you remember a fellow by the name of Warlow von Clave?"

"The fool who tried to usurp your territory…and paid the price for his arrogance? Yes, I do remember, what about him?"

"When we confronted each other, he made a certain promise to me…." Runfar now opened the door to the treasury, revealing a room full of gold, chests, countless gems, statues, and many types of artifacts.

"And apparently, he truly is a man of his word."

"No way….the condition of his loss was him giving his riches to you? And he actually kept his promise? Is he sane of mind?"

"I was surprised as well, but it seems that with the kind of act I put in front of him, I may have severely traumatized him and his troops, when his servants came carrying the offerings and chests full of gold, I couldn"t believe my eyes. There was also a letter attached, begging me to be merciful and forgive his past transgressions. They seem to be worried that I might suddenly change my mind and in their mind they believe that I am capable of wiping all of them out by myself."

"Didn"t you beat him rather easily?"

"Only because I continuously fed on mana of more than thirty people over several days before the confrontation, if it wasn"t for that, then he would have crushed me rather easily." Absorbing a lot of mana provided a temporary power up, but his undead side literally consumed the mana at a fast rate, within two days, all that mana he stole ended up gone, returning him to weak and mana hungry state.

"Let"s just say, I got lucky." Dark Lord chuckled, but the truth was that there was absolutely no luck involved, however Camilla did not know about his curse, it is best to keep such things to himself. Everything went according to a plan, every time he encountered a problem; he took advantage of the curse in order to make a plan to counter them.

"There is so much gold…" Camilla stood in awe as everything in the room seemed to paint the room in golden yellow color.

"Indeed. There is enough to finance Shadow Lords, staff, and even more people, for the next ten years."

Now they proceeded to exit the treasury.

Dark Lord had Camilla cast a conditional concealment upon the room, so that anyone other than Camilla and Dark Lord could not see the gold within the room, to them, the room would be completely empty.

* * *

"I warn you, Morph, what we are about to do might be a little shocking."

"No matter what it is, master, I will follow your lead."

Morphus, within Dark Lord"s body and Camilla, now teleported towards the knights" residence. Purpose of the visit was simple, collecting mana and taking one alive with them for the purposes of being used for certain experimentation.

With concealment cast upon them, Camilla proceeded to poison each one of the knights with paralyzing agent. As a snake type demon, his body naturally produced poisons with different effects. Now, even if they are conscious, the knights would not be able to move or even make a sound.

There were ten knights inside this building, none of them were Holy Knights, but lower ranking knights, but for the purposes of this experiment, they will suffice.

Without any shred of mercy, Dark Lord proceeded to drain mana out of nine of the knights, killing them on the spot.

As for the lucky tenth knight, Dark Lord took out his crystal dagger and proceeded to cut off all four of his limbs.

"Well, now you have enough mana and a perfect subject to train with, so let"s go ahead."

The purpose of this night raid was for Dark Lord and Morphus to learn how to recreate lost body parts. It was different from healing, which merely restored body to an earlier state or accelerated the regeneration process. Healing has its limits, some scars never fade away and lost body parts will not grow back. Which is why, Dark Lord proposed that he and Morphus learn how to do just that.

Morphus previously told him that it is theoretically possible to restore limbs if there is sufficient mana of at least four of the five common elements and extreme control over the mana. Morphus would manage the control while Dark Lord provided mana, by stealing mana of nine knights; he had a lot of mana with different affinities stored within his body.

"Fascinating, even though your body is incapable of producing mana by itself, you can steal mana from others…that is pretty convenient." Morphus was clearly impressed.

"Let"s get to the business, Morph, I cauterized the bleeding, now let"s get to the job."

The limbless torso was soundlessly squirming, being left alive just to be toyed like this was too much to take, but Dark Lord paid him no heed.

Using the mana provided by Dark Lord, Morphus proceeded to try to recreate knight"s limbs.

Initially, there was no success, the structures he made with earth mana crumbled away, then he tried to combine water and earth mana, but the structure still gave away.

Then, he tried adding fire into the mix, the structure now solidified, he did his best in order to make the arm as close to the original as possible, he had the severed original arm for reference near him.

But still, it was still not functional, so, Morphus proceeded to add lightning magic to simulate the nervous system.

After countless trials and errors, he succeeded in creating the right arm that was functional, but it was still not perfect, along with the fact that instead of creating it attached to the right shoulder, it was attached to where his leg was severed. Yet, it was a work in progress.

As sun started to rise, Dark Lord had Morphus stop, and now they carved marks of teleportation upon the corpses and the crippled body of the knight. With a simple snap, they were teleported to the goblin nest to be eaten.

"I suppose we can think of this mission as success, you have obtained very useful experience, did you now, Morph?"

"Yes, but it is hardly perfect."

"No, worries, I don"t need sleep. We can pay visit to more knights each and every night until we get it right."

As such, Dark Lord and Morphus, for the next two weeks, visited many knights, performing such experiments on one or two of them at a time, and after countless flops and failures, they managed to learn how to recreate body parts. However, while they looked aesthetically similar, though their color was earthly grey instead of skin color, they had a single flaw they could not eliminate; they had no sense of touch.

No matter what they did, while the limb could touch something and do any normal motions, it could not feel pain or have a sensation of touch. But in terms of functionality, it was a success.