“I"m unable to speak but communication is possible with lifeforms via psychic means.”As the evil eye made mention of his talents, it couldn"t help pitch his head high with pride. Unfortunately for it, it wasn"t exactly in the best position to be proud and it swiftly realized this as well. Soon after it did that, it lowered its rounded body in what looked like a show of humility.
However, since it was able to communicate, that made things a lot simpler. In the interest of time, I immediately opened up with the issue everyone had on their minds right now: “Let"s hear it then, exactly what is going on here?”
“Esteemed l.u.s.t Demon, can you elaborate on what you meant by [exactly what is going on here]? I"m unable to comprehend your question.”
"Oh my, it actually knew how to play dumb as well." The next moment, a sinister smirk crossed my lips as I turned towards a slightly distracted Weslin: “Want to have another round with that squash ball?”
“What"s a squash ball?” Asked a surprised Weslin.
“Mimiya wants to hit it too, Mimiya wants to hit it too!” Mimiya on other hand was pretty quick on the uptake. Without needing an explanation or even a reply for that matter, she grabbed the meatball and rushed off towards the nearest wall like a gust of wind…
"How is that even squash ball? That"s just american football, you potato!"
After another round of friendly ball games, I had her release the meatball for the time being.
“So, still breathing over there?”
“Still alright…still alright…if you can give me some more souls…” Came the evil eye"s telepathic response after hearing my slightly rude question.
“I heard dying is a lot easier.”
"…I swear, does this meatball not realize that all I need from him is the ability to answer questions? To think its skin is actually thick enough to ask for more souls, does it look like I"ve forgotten about our grudge already?"
“No, no, I still want to live…” Hearing the dangerous tone in my voice, the evil eye immediately started begging for mercy: “Does the esteemed l.u.s.t demon not have questions to ask, please go ahead, please.”
“If you"d just been a little more obedient earlier, you could"ve saved yourself a world of hurt. Some meatb.a.l.l.s just love to get beaten up.” After that snide comment, I promptly questioned him about his origins along with whatever matters I wasn"t sure about.
“Do you have any other companions?”
“No, it"s just me.” It quickly answered. “Us evil eyes are actually a race of lone wanderers. While we are in the lower star levels, we cooperate with each other to hunt for food. However, once we evolve into three-stars, we leave the clan to form our own enclaves seeing as we now had the ability to fend for ourselves.”
"So they are lone wanderers, and by lone it meant that they wouldn"t stay with other clan members but that didn"t mean they would stay alone forever.”
While the evil eyes were still in their infant stages, their mind control abilities weren"t strong enough to control the other races so they mostly stayed together. However, once they evolved into three-stars, their psychic abilities grew strong enough that they could start enslaving others to defend them.
This ability sounded pretty impressive and it naturally piqued my interest as well. Thus, I continued down this line of questioning: “Since your race tend to wander alone, how do you all reproduce?”
“We are hermaphrodites and can reproduce as.e.xually.”
At that, a strange thought jumped into my mind, “So you"re both the pitcher and the catcher at the same time?”
While it didn"t understand the meaning of those terms, it clearly got the gist of what wasn"t really a bunch of complex terms in the first place. It immediately sent a correction telepathically: “No, no, we"re hermaphrodites”
“…” "Either way, it just means you don"t have s.e.x, right? Nerd."
Following that, I continued asking a whole swathe of questions which the evil eye answered one by one, though the answers he gave weren"t really that important anymore.
The reason why the Abaddon rodents gathered en ma.s.se like that was because it was controlling them from behind the scenes. Throughout the whole process, only the head rodent , also known as the potato who tried to negotiate with me, knew of its existence.
Thinking back on that, its surrender terms probably would have included information on the evil eye. Unfortunately for both of us, I ignored it directly otherwise this evil eye wouldn"t have been able to ensnare us so easily.
As for those bone spears, that was another matter which arose from the death of that head rodent. The evil eye had implanted a soul mark on the head rodent, it was this soul mark which transferred the news regarding the head rodent"s death back to it after activating upon said death.
Thanks to that bit of foresight, it not only learnt of the rodent"s demise but also that its nest might end up in trouble. Thus, as a last minute measure, it ordered the remaining rodent lieutenants to have their subordinates craft those bone spears as a defensive measure.
As for why it didn"t do so from the start, it was afraid that the rodents would expand too quickly after gaining such an advantage and that could potentially derail its plans. Given that there were limits to its psychic power, it was only natural that it wouldn"t be able control everyone should such a thing happen.
"So it was basically thinking like an emperor from the past where the more ignorant the ma.s.ses were, the more advantageous things were for those in power. That"s how all that confucian nonsense about showing loyalty to your monarch took root. If the ma.s.ses got too smart, you couldn"t even bone a couple of women or kill a bunch of pigs without ending up on some trending news article on the web…oh, I seemed to have gone off topic again." (TL: Word count w***e.)
The Door of the Dead was the evil eye"s last card in his deck. In fact, the door was the very reason why he enslaved these rats and built a nest nearby. The evil eye wanted to leave the Prison of the Dead just like us but it didn"t dare to do so alone. Because it wasn"t a moron, it surmised that the rumor about four-stars being able to leave might have been false. Thus, it decided to forcefully breach the exit, hence all that nonsense with controlling the head rodent.
While the rodent"s had an average combat ability at best, their numbers were ma.s.sive. It could be said that they were the most numerous race in the entire Prison of the Dead so it wasn"t strange at all that the evil eye targeted them.
Initially, it wanted to stabilize its control over those rats before expanding to the other races after which it would form a giant army with those rodents at the core.
Now that I"ve gotten the gist of the situation, I decided to recruit this evil eye. It was, after all, an intelligent creature and devil knows I"m lacking in servants like that who could share my burden.
“Do you wish to die or live?”
“Live.” It didn"t even need to consider such an obvious question.
“Then serve me.” At that, I smiled sinisterly. “If you aren"t willing to…”
“I"ll serve!” Naturally, it accepted my entreatment seeing as that was the only way for it to live.
However, there was no way I would trust the words of an intelligent eyeball so easily. Thus, I posed it another difficult question: “You"re a clever meatball. That"s why I knew that you would definitely accept my proposal. However, I have a condition to add to that, you must sign a slave contract with me. I want you to leave behind a piece of your soul for me to control.”
“Slave contract…” Those two words were extremely easy to understand. As the words suggested, anyone who signed that would become a slave and would never be able to make a comeback unless ,of course, the master willingly voided the contract and returned the soul.
A slave contract was an extremely domineering form of contract that, once signed, would forbid the slave from ever refusing the master"s commands and even more so, from betraying the master. In fact, even thoughts of betrayal weren"t allowed or the slave would face a backlash from the contract that would leave anyone wishing for death.
As for the master, he was able to force any command on the slave, suicide included. Without a doubt, this was an extremely lopsided contract that no one would ever sign unless they had no other choice.
All that knowledge came from hereditary memory so I a.s.sumed the other devils knew of it as well. However, such a contract wasn"t without drawbacks, rather severe ones in fact. If the strength disparity between the two parties was too large, the contract signing would fail the moment the enslaved party rebelled. Thus, such contracts were usually signed when one party was overwhelmingly stronger than the other or when the other party wasn"t resisting.
The evil eye was a four-star while I was merely a three-star so the only way this contract could succeed was if the evil eye was willing to submit.
However, it clearly wasn"t willing to. The moment those two words were spoken, it immediately shook its head profusely and even began to show signs of fighting back.
Yet, the moment it saw the surrounding medusas close in on it with hostile intentions, it became a lot more docile.
Clearly there was no way to escape so why bother with the futile resistance.
Thus, the signing proceeded without a hitch. As I finished reciting the last bit of the contract, a thread of soul energy separated from the evil eye and fused into my body. With that, it could no longer resist till I released it or it died.
“Master…” It said out of pure instinct.
“Since you still don"t have a name, how about I give you one right now, hmmm, you"ll be…Evilin.”
"Since a person that"s neither female nor male is called a man goblin, a evil eye that"s neither female nor male…shouldn"t it be called an evilin then? Mhm, makes sense."
“Many thanks for the Master"s generosity.”
"The name sounds kind of strange but it seemed to like it so everything works out, I guess."
(TL: Man goblin is supposed to refer to trannies and the chinese pinyin for it is xie yao which is also a h.o.m.onym for laxative which sounds like xie yao as well.)
“Mhm, now, I want you to enslave the rest of the Abaddon Rodents, didn"t you mention that several thousand rodents escaped while you setting up the defensive array? I order you to capture them immediately, I need fodder, lots and lots of fodder.”
“Understood, Master.”
“Weslin, I want you to accompany Evilin as well and make sure to bring more men.”
“Alright.” Without much fuss, she promptly led a division of lizardmen away with the evil eye. "She"s quite an obedient one, isn"t she."
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It was at that moment that the soul flame collection finished up as well. Initially, collecting over 10 000 souls would"ve taken a much longer time but the area around the Door of the Dead was slightly special in that it automatically absorbed any soul flames within range after a set amount of time. Thanks to that, the amount of soul flames collected wasn"t as much as we had antic.i.p.ated.
In total, we collected roughly 3000 zero-star soul flames, 1000 one-star soul flames, 700 two-star soul flames and 300 three-star soul flames. While it wasn"t the tens of thousands we had expected, at least it wasn"t nothing.
As for our losses…it had to be said that this battle was too much of a surprise for us, though our arrogance played a part as well. The lizardmen suffered over 200 deaths and 500 of their members were severely injured. My guardsmen suffered 100 deaths in total and the medusas suffered the least of us all. Their death count was less than 10 and in total, they had less than 100 casualties.