The friend of a friend might not necessarily be your friend, but the enemy of an enemy would easily become your ally.The current situation proved this saying once again.
The devils might not have been as strong as the demons as a species, but Kamiltias the Lord of Lies, Heimor the Lord of Despair, and Sarwenstan the Lord of Tyranny had been three Main G.o.d level Devil Lords, making the devils the second strongest faction in the entirety of the lower planes.
The devils had the strange social structure of being "orderly among Chaos", along with being militarized and also functioning strangely similar to a corporation. Although the devils had many problems, they were capable of tripling their combat potential through their outstanding organization and strategic abilities. They also had many tricks and schemes. In many ways, ordinary people viewed them to be on the same level as demons.
Actually, what gave people the biggest headache back then was that Death G.o.d Ayer had also been secretly supporting the devils. This made all Main G.o.ds, no matter what affiliation, mostly unwilling to completely antagonize the devils.
However, some things had now completely changed.
The nine Devil Lords were all infamous sources of sin in all the planes. But now, two of the Main G.o.d Devil Lords had actually joined the h.e.l.l Faction, bringing along one additional Devil Lord with them. There was also the double betrayal of Ilmisya, the Lord of Temptation, so now the entire devil faction only actually had one Main G.o.d Devil Lord, Sarwenstan, and four weaker Devil Lords remaining.
After that, Lasnina, the Lord of Curses, was completely sealed away by Roland one year ago. Karwenz then slew another Devil Lord.
The devils had formerly been a top-level faction with three Main G.o.ds" worth of strength, but now only three of the original nine Devil Lords were still with them. It was just like lacking one player for mahjong... ahem, I meant that they didn"t even have enough individuals to guard their territory which was shrinking every day.
If it wasn"t for the fact that it was now the Holy War, so that all attention was on the mortal plane, the devils would have likely been destroyed by the demons and Evil G.o.ds already. In the lower planes, weakness was sin, and anyone weak who also possessed the best territory and dimensions would be the first to be destroyed.
It was unavoidable that the devils would decline so much after losing more than half of their elites and most powerful individuals. Perhaps their final fate was to lose all of their extra territory and dominate only a single level of the Chaos Abyss, which wouldn"t be much different from other Evil G.o.ds and Demon Lords.
Sarwenstan, the final remaining Main G.o.d Devil Lord, would never be able to accept that.
"Very good. Considering our similar situations, I believe that we"ll be getting along quite well."
If one only judged on physical appearance, Sarwenstan seemed much more like a dragon than a demon.
Currently, he had shrunk his size in the mortal plane, yet he was still more than 30 meters tall, a size impossible to conceal.
Looking at him from afar, he seemed just like a gigantic two-headed dragon which was covered in shadows, but he actually had three heads.
The black dragon head was breathing faint green flames in the darkness. The white dragon head was breathing black frost. But, the real decision-making head was the shadowy humanoid figure between the two dragon heads.
This was a shadowy figure made out of darkness. There was no face and the figure was unclear, but it wore a crown of shadow from where its voice emitted.
With such a physical appearance, it was natural that people would say that he had formerly been a dragon. Yet, even the oldest of Supreme Immemorial Dragons were still younger than this ancient devil. It was impossible to know Sarwenstan"s origin.
Currently, Sarwenstan"s two dragon heads were laughing loudly. Just his tremendous voice alone would be capable of shattering pitiful skeleton servants.
Shupnus seemed to be quite insignificant in front of Sarwenstan, but n.o.body would dare to ignore Shupnus.
All around the two, liches were busy adjusting the Dimension Door leading to the Death Planes. They were adjusting the coordinates to the lower planes.
Meanwhile, many living individuals were howling in pain and despair as they were sacrificed to help activate the Dimension Door"s new coordinates.
Unlike what Roland had expected, Shupnus and Anina hadn"t had a disagreement with the other Undead Emperors. Instead, Shupnus"s temper was so bad that he directly had a major argument with Sandro who came to discuss things with him, which ended up in all of the other Undead Emperors leaving Shupnus alone to fight against Bardi.
That"s right, even Anina, who had been allied with him for the longest, had now left him.
Anina was the youngest Undead Emperor in the world apart from Roland and Lorci. All she wanted was to harvest enough souls and blood to obtain her own undead country which could satisfy her daily needs for research.
Originally, her goal had been quite similar to Shupnus"s, as the latter had arrogantly been shouting about conquering human land all the way to San Antonio. However, Anina had personally harvested 500,000 souls in the previous major victory against Bardi.
The rest was obvious. Anina shamelessly took all of the spoils and ran off without sharing anything.
Sandro even a.s.sisted her in transferring a large number of corpses and souls to her personal Darkness Plane. Anina then unhesitatingly returned home as she was highly satisfied with what she had obtained.
Anina had planned on running away right after obtaining what she could to begin with. Now, not only had she achieved her goal, she could even escape from the humans" revenge by returning to her own plane. She had no reason to hesitate.
Since Sandro and Shupnus had already turned on each other, Sandro simply took the majority of the undead army west and into the sea in order to go fight against the ogres. The completely isolated Shupnus was completely unable to stop him.
Shupnus was rather pitiful as he had ruined his relations.h.i.+p with the other Undead Emperors, which meant that he had been cut off from Asolivis, the main Dimensional Door connected to the Desecration Plane. Shupnus was no longer able to transport any more undead troops from his own home plane. Not to mention, Anina had shamelessly run off with all the recent spoils of war… Shupnus really didn"t have many troops at his command anymore.
"They"re all so shortsighted, foolish, and cowardly. Is this all that it takes to satisfy them? I am ashamed to be allied with all of you."
Shupnus successfully antagonized all of the other Undead Emperors, which meant that he was forced to personally take action in battle due to lacking undead troops. Shupnus was then forced to use his backup plan after he obtained only a minor victory with his ambush.
Shupnus"s options were really limited. Only the residents of the lower planes would possibly keep a long-term alliance with the undead. Shupnus knew quite clearly what the demons were like, and that it would be easy to invite them but difficult to make them leave, and that no matter what the demons did, Shupnus would only be able to obtain scorched earth and rubble in the end. This would be the opposite of what he wanted, as his ambition was to reestablish a country for the undead without the living.
In the end, he was forced to contact the devils who were in a similarly poor situation. At the very least, it would be possible to communicate and sign a contract with them. To Shupnus"s surprise, not only did the devils respond, Devil Lord Sarwenstan even personally came here.
But now, Shupnus felt unwilling in his heart as he watched the devils arriving through the Dimensional Door.
He knew that he would lose the right to be the leader here once the devils" numbers and combat strength exceeded the undead here. However, the human allied army was marching upon him, putting him in a difficult spot and giving him no other choice.
A tremendous number of human hostages were slaughtered in order to power the Dimensional Door, giving this place an overwhelming stench of blood. However, Sarwenstan was highly satisfied, as he had been waiting for this opportunity for so long already.
Meanwhile, an antique style soul carriage arrived at this moment in Asolivis.
I currently felt like things were becoming even more difficult to deal with as I saw all the devils flying around in the sky.