For demons, the soul was everything. It was power. Currency. Sustenance. Without it, war had no reward—only meaningless carnage.
"That might explain the absence of soul essence," muttered a vampiric noble with bloodstained lips, eyes narrowed in growing alarm, "but it doesn't explain why the flesh—even the blood—disintegrates into dust the moment death claims them. Not even a scrap left for consumption. Not a drop to drink."
He pointed toward a mass of frenzied demons tearing at a monstrous corpse that collapsed into powder before their eyes. The frenzied devouring had turned into a cannibalistic riot. They were no longer fighting the enemy—they were turning on each other, desperate to feed, to taste anything.
"I've never seen anything like it," another high-ranking demon muttered. "This isn't natural. This... this is divine interference, or worse."
"In other words," the Frost-Fanged Demon growled, his breath misting in the cold air, "we could slaughter every last creature in this city—and still walk away starving."
The Dark-Winged Man nodded grimly. "So it appears."
A collective shudder passed through the war council.
"Hateful."
The word hung in the air like a curse. It wasn't just anger—it was hunger. It was despair. For beings born of the Abyss, who devoured life itself to grow stronger, this battlefield had become a cruel joke. Their instincts screamed for carnage, but their minds could no longer justify it.
"Mo! Where are you going?" the Frost Demon barked suddenly, catching sight of one of the winged demons rising into the smoke-stained sky, its enormous flesh wings beating against the frozen air.
"Somewhere else," the demon called back, already a distant shadow on the horizon. "Where souls still scream and flesh doesn't vanish into dust. You can rot here if you like."
The Frost Demon growled in frustration.
One by one, the other high level demons began to make their decision. Blades were sheathed, wings unfurled. Abyssal sigils flared as demons vanished into the ether, returning to more fruitful battlefields.
"I've had enough of this." The Vampire Duke gave one final glance toward the city. With a hiss of disappointment, he unfurled his leathery wings and launched into the sky, following the exodus of his kind.
The floodgates had opened. More demons departed. The prideful, the pragmatic, the predatory—they all turned from this cursed conquest, no longer willing to waste their strength on a land that gave nothing in return.
And yet, not all had the luxury of retreat.
The Frost Legion remained.
Bound to the Dark Frost Giant— the Abyss lord—they had orders not just to conquer, but to occupy. Their cannon fodder remained on the frontlines—mindless beasts and lesser spawn who hadn't yet realized the tide had turned.
Other demons can leave freely, but the frost demons are direct subordinates of the Frost Lord Dark Frost Giant. They still need to manage those cannon fodder and cannot abandon them directly.
With a contemptuous snort, the Frost Demon lifted his face to the heavens and let out a piercing howl. It echoed across the battlefield, sharp as broken ice, and carried with it the ancient sigil of retreat.
What followed was not orderly withdrawal—it was chaos.
The demon horde below, suddenly leaderless and enraged, turned on itself. Cohesion shattered. Chains of command broke.
As the frost demon's retreat order came, the surging demon army below suddenly became confused.
They rampaged like starving animals. Fights broke out. Wings were torn. Horns shattered. Blood and bile stained the ground as former allies gutted each other in a desperate bid for survival.
One lesser demon, too stupid or too crazed to flee, blocked the path of a retreating mid-rank ice fiend.
"Out of my way, filth."
The ice demon didn't wait for compliance. He tore the creature in half with a single brutal slash, devoured the foul-tasting soul out of reflex, and immediately spat in disgust.
"Rotten," he snarled—and fled.
High above the city walls, Skye stood watching the carnage unfold. For a moment, he was stunned. This wasn't victory in the traditional sense—it was collapse. Implosion. Madness.
But war was war, and the opportunity was ripe.
But no matter what, it would be a pity not to make a good charge at such a perfect opportunity.
He gripped the horn at her side, raised it to his lips, and let out a thunderous call. The defenders of the city rallied. Arrows nocked. Magic flared.
"These are all food!"
The declaration was not made in jest, but with certainty rooted in terrible knowledge. For he had tested this theory before—again and again, across battlefields soaked in ichor and the shredded remains of abyssal horrors.
Under normal circumstances, the flesh of demons is an abomination unto itself. It is no mere meat, but a writhing, corrupted substance saturated with madness, curses, and volatile energies drawn from the howling depths of the Abyss. For ordinary creatures—goblins, humans, even trolls—consuming demon flesh is akin to swallowing a shard of the infernal plane. The consequences are horrific, immediate, and often irreversible.
The first bite is a gamble with damnation. The lucky ones die on the spot, blood boiling into black sludge, their veins bursting as incompatible energies ravage their bodies. Others do not die—at least not right away. Instead, they scream as horns sprout from their skulls, as their skin twists into scales, boils, or pustules that pulse with demonic runes. Their minds unravel, consumed by alien instincts, driven by a hunger that eclipses thought.
These are the demonized. Not born of the Abyss, but made—twisted mockeries of their former selves, cursed to wander as half-things, always starving, always howling.
And yet, the transformation is not the only horror. Surviving the initial corruption comes at a steep price: unending addiction. Demon meat is poison, yes—but it is also ecstasy. It feeds something primal, unlocking hidden strength and supernatural perception for brief, euphoric moments. Each bite becomes harder to resist than the last. A man might kill his own children just to chew one more mouthful. A mother might tear open her own womb in delirium. Whole villages have crumbled under this hunger, becoming breeding grounds of madness and plague.
Worse still, demon flesh carries countless latent diseases—magical, spiritual, and physical—that no low level healer, priest, or alchemist has ever cured. Some victims rot from the inside, devoured by worms that only grow in abyssal taint. Others lose their reflections, their shadows, or their names. There are tales of men who ate demon hearts and were hunted forever by the whispering voices of those hearts—never sleeping again, never sane again.
But not all were doomed.
He had discovered a secret.
Those with the blood of his master running through their veins—be it pure or diluted—were immune to the demonization process. Something within that blood burned hotter than the Abyss, rejecting the corruption, purging the foreign will before it could root itself. Even the weakest of goblins, when granted this sacred blood, could consume demonic flesh without becoming monsters.
They did not fall to madness. They did not mutate or convulse. They grew.
Their bodies, saturated by elemental chaos, strengthened in unnatural ways. Their muscles thickened, their bones hardened like ironwood, and their eyes gleamed with elemental fury. In essence, demon meat became nourishment—pure, potent sustenance untainted by side effects, refined by their blood into raw power.
And so, for them, this battlefield was a banquet.
"A full-scale attack!" Skye gave the order directly without hesitation.
He was not afraid that this was a trap by the other party. First, there were some strong men hidden in their Black Wing Lair, always on the lookout for demon powerhouses. Second, the master did not remind them of any danger.
After Skye's order, three of the eight core legions that had not been dispatched by the Black Wing Lair—the Red Devil Eagle Air Cavalry Legion (dragon-born humans), the Blood Legion (formed by the Harpies), and the Silver Legion (from various clans, wearing Black Wing Warrior Silver Pedestal Armor)—began to move.
The three major legions are not large in number, not even 10,000 in total, but all of them begin at high-level strength. Among them, the strongest and smallest in number is the Silver Legion, which only has a thousand warriors. It is even more exaggerated. Silver figures flashed past, and a large number of demons and dark creatures were chopped into two pieces, their internal organs flowing all over the ground.
The silver base armor is different from ordinary armor. During the wearing process, it wraps the Black Wing Warrior's body like mercury, tightly fitting without any gaps.
At the same time, the armor comes with a huge silver-white chopping sword, and metal wings can spread out from the back.
A powerful high-level Black Winged Familiar wore this suit of armor, and his strength was comparable to that of an ordinary fifteenth-order master.
And when there are a thousand such strong men, the killing effect is terrifying.
The 19th-order frost demon who left last saw this scene, and his pupils shrank slightly.
"The individual quality of this legion is very strong."
However, the Frost Demon was slightly surprised but not very shocked.
Because in the City of Frost, there are many legions that are stronger and more numerous than the Silver Legion. They are all core legions established by the Frost Lord himself, accompanying him in the bloody battles of the abyss and plane wars.
"The information here must be reported to the adults in time," the Frost Demon thought secretly in his heart, fluttering the wings formed by the frost power behind his back and preparing to speed up and leave here.
But—
"I've been wandering around for so long. I thought you guys had a legendary demon coming this time, but I didn't expect that it's just you idiots."
A sigh full of regret sounded, and a six-armed snake demon over ten meters in size appeared in the air in front of the frost demon.
The legendary level of pressure formed a beam, tightly suppressing the frost demon.
When the Frost Demon saw the appearance of the six-armed snake demon and the unabashedly powerful aura on his body, his expression changed, and he knelt down without hesitation.
"My lord, I surrender."
Ozzy stopped the purple scimitar that was about to cut down the frost demon, looked at it with a grin, and after thinking for a few seconds, he let this guy go.
The main reason was that the master's order was to keep these demons as much as possible, and Ozzy stopped because he was afraid of making the master unhappy.
As the peak 19th-order frost demon surrendered, the remaining hundreds of thousands of demons and dark creatures also surrendered.
Those guys who didn't surrender and had no brains were already dead.
"Be honest and eat it quickly!"
Teams of Black Wing Warriors picked up the small red pills containing the power of the Black Dragon Lord's void blood and directly stuffed them into the mouths of these surrendered demons and dark creatures.
In front of these Black Wing Warriors, who were at least two meters tall, with quite a few reaching three meters or even four or five meters, the strong bodies of these demons and dark creatures looked so thin.
Only those such as the Barbarian Demon and the Frost Ice Demon did not suffer so much in terms of body shape and muscles.
The efficiency of the Black Wing Warriors was very fast. After all, they had been doing this business for a while.
Practice makes perfect.
After the eight to nine million captives were imbued with the power of the void, the Black Wing Warriors divided the captives into two batches.
One group was demons, and the other group was dark creatures.
And so, the tide of demons was released—millions scattered into the winds of chaos, vanishing like smoke into the vast, war-torn world.
In their place, just over seventy thousand dark creatures remained—survivors not by mercy, but by design.
From atop a towering obsidian platform, Skye gazed down upon them, his dark red eyes gleaming with silent authority. Below him stretched a sea of shadows—werewolves with eyes like coals, vampires cloaked in crimson hunger, dark gnolls snarling with barely restrained malice, obsidian-skinned elves with blades sheathed in shadow—and many others whose names had long been forgotten by the surface world.
"You now belong to the Black Wing Lair," she declared, her voice amplified by magic, cutting through the silence like a blade. "Your loyalty is pledged to the one true ruler of this age—the great Black Dragon Lord."
There were no cheers. No defiance either. Just silence. Fear. Submission.
Skye spoke no further. His task was not to inspire—only to command. With a final glance, he turned and vanished into the wind.
Soon after, the Black Wing Warriors arrived—disciplined, armored, merciless. One by one, they divided the dark creatures into tightly controlled units, groups of dozens or hundreds. Every formation was seeded with elite warriors of the Black Wing Lair, their presence a living reminder of power and consequence.
The creatures were marched away—not to prisons, but to future battlefields.
They were not told what they would fight. Only that they would fight.
As wars ignited across distant frontiers, and the Void continued to bleed into their blood, these dark beings would be forged anew—sharpened by battle, tempered by magic, shaped by fear. It was uncertain whether they would ever worship the Black Dragon Lord with true devotion. But they would learn reverence. They would learn awe.
And awe, after all, is the first seed of faith.
Unlike demons—wild, unstable, devourers of everything, including order—dark creatures retained a measure of reason. Many of them still possessed enough will to understand hierarchy, enough intelligence to fear consequence. That made them usable.
The same could not be said for the horde of demons.
Skye had no intention of shackling them to discipline. It would be folly to corral madness and expect loyalty in return.
If they take in those hundreds of thousands of demons and brainwash them in this way, they are afraid that in the end, they will also cultivate a group of rebels.
Rather than doing this, it would be better to let the demons imbued with the power of the void grow freely outside.
Better to cast them out—untethered, feral, drunk on Void power. Let them roam. Let them feast. Let them die.
Those who perished were nothing but ash. Those who survived would become either prey for the Black Dragon Lord or fodder for the ever-expanding legions of the Voidspawn.
If they survive, they will be void food for the Black Dragon Lord or reserves for the Void Descendants. If they die, they are dead, and there is no loss to the Black Wing Lair.
It was a gamble with no real loss.
Thus, the war—colossal in scale but uneventful in the eyes of history—came to a quiet and calculated end.
A campaign not waged for glory or land, but for the slow corrosion of the world's balance.
And in that silence, beneath the cold sky and black banners, the foundations of something far more terrifying were laid.
---
"Master, in this campaign, our Black Wing Lair sustained the loss of approximately 2,300 intermediate Black Wing Warriors and fewer than 20 high-ranking elites," Skye reported with unwavering composure, his voice echoing across the obsidian basin of Dragon Pond.
"But the harvest far outweighed the cost. We've collected the corpses of over 450,000 low-tier demons, more than 20,000 mid-tier, over a thousand high-tier, and three greater demon. Additionally, we successfully infused nearly 900,000 demons with the power of the Void—including a frost demon who has reached the apex of the 19th Order. That particular specimen now serves under Commander Ozzy's direct command and has not been released."
He paused briefly, then added, "We've also acquired over 70,000 dark creature soldiers from various races. With some discipline and guidance, more than 10,000 of them are suitable for deployment into our major auxiliary legions."
Skye stood tall on the scorched blackstone, his dark scales fluttering gently in the ambient draconic aura wind. His gaze remained reverent as he addressed the towering presence before him.
I—seated atop the elevated ridge of the Dragon Pond, my obsidian-scaled body coiled like a living mountain—listened in silence. My wings were folded behind my back like a fortress, my red eyes gleaming with a mixture of pride and calculation. At over eighty-seven meters long, I cast a shadow that blanketed the entire basin.
With a slow motion, I parted my jaws in a toothy, cold smile.
"So not only have we retained our strength," I rumbled, my voice a deep echo that shook the stones beneath, "but we've grown even stronger."
"Yes, Master," Skye answered, eyes shining with fierce devotion. "All of it is the fruit of your divine will."
I offered no praise. There was no need. Loyalty was expected. Competence was the minimum. Instead, my gaze drifted to the distant horizon, where dark clouds loomed like memories of war.
"The demons retreated not from fear of death," I said softly, "but because they realized the souls and flesh of my chosen were no longer theirs to claim. Their instinct for chaos told them it was a waste. Yet they remain unpredictable. Monitor them closely. Never assume the abyss has no teeth left to bare."
Skye bowed. "As you command."
*****
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