A Hostile Work Environment
The Demon Lord's glowing red eyes flared with intense, murderous rage. He didn't just speak; his voice boomed, vibrating through the muddy ground like a physical shockwave of dark energy.
"Mortal filth..." the Demon Lord growled, gripping the armrests of his bone throne so hard the ancient dragon skulls cracked under his fingers. "You stand in the shadow of absolute death, yet you dare to babble like mindless cattle? You will be erased from existence."
Malesh completely rolled his eyes, utterly unfazed by the glowing aura of doom.
"I don't give a single fuck about your dramatic little speech, or whatever edgy monologue you are reciting right now," Malesh mocked, waving a dismissive hand. "Listen here, D-Moon Lord. Or is it Dulli Dulli Lord? Dulwadi Lord? Whatever the fuck your official HR title is, I don't care about your threats. You are sitting on a pile of dirty bones in the middle of a muddy forest. You are practically homeless."
Kniya's eye aggressively twitched. The fanboy inside of him was absolutely furious that his Head of Production was ruining this highly anticipated fantasy encounter.
Without a single word, Kniya drew his heavy iron revolver, pointed it downward, and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The deafening gunshot echoed through the silent forest. The heavy-caliber bullet tore straight through Malesh's right thigh in an explosion of blood and fabric.
The Parasite of Production
The entire monster army flinched. Filoska and Salesh just sighed.
Malesh stumbled back a step, looking down at the bleeding hole in his expensive suit pants, completely annoyed. He looked up at his Managing Director.
"Kniya, what the fuck?!" Malesh yelled. "Why are you so furious that you just shot me?! Just because I am misspelling that fucklord's name?!"
But Kniya wasn't even listening to Malesh's complaints. Kniya's eyes were locked entirely on the wound.
The gaping bullet hole in Malesh's thigh was already closing. The torn flesh rapidly stitched itself back together, the shattered bone knitting perfectly in a matter of seconds. But as the wound closed, Kniya noticed something horrifying happening to the environment behind Malesh.
A massive, ancient oak tree standing just a few feet away was rapidly withering. Its green leaves turned a sickly brown, disintegrating into ash. The thick trunk shriveled and cracked, completely drained of all its life force in mere seconds until it was nothing but a dead, petrified husk.
"How is that even possible?" Kniya asked, lowering his smoking gun.
"It is simple as that," Malesh replied casually, brushing the blood off his now perfectly healed leg. "I am just using the environment to repair myself, I mean heal myself!! I am consuming the raw energy from the surroundings."
Kniya stared at the dead, gray husk of the massive oak tree, genuinely disgusted.
"Malesh, I think you are really, truly selfish," Kniya muttered, rubbing his temples to fight off a headache. "Just to heal one single bullet wound, an entire tree had to completely die."
"I don't give a single fuck about a tree," Malesh sneered, checking his suit jacket for any stray blood splatter. "So you better try harder than that, Kniya. I am not going to die that easily."
Kniya let out a long, exhausted groan. "Malesh, I have to say this for sure... I think you are a really big monster. You are literally a much bigger monster than the Demon Lord sitting right in front of us."
"And why the fuck are you so obsessed with this useless idiot anyway?!" Malesh shot back, pointing angrily at the bone throne. "Your favorite novel was about a democratic Demon Lord! Look at this guy! I highly doubt he is democratic! He doesn't even have a functioning parliament!"
The Legend of the Dicklord
Before Kniya could defend his favorite literary genre, the air around them grew freezing cold. A terrifying, oppressive pressure descended on the clearing.
"SILENCE, YOU WRETCHED WORMS!" the Demon Lord roared, rising from his throne to his full, towering height. His voice dripped with ancient, world-ending malice. "You dare to ignore my presence?! You dare to bicker in the face of absolute despair?! I think you truly wish to suffer a slow, agonizing death!"
Malesh put his hands on his hips, completely unimpressed by the glowing red aura of doom.
"Hey, you, Dem-Lo, Demon Lord, whatever the fuck your actual name is," Malesh shouted back, cutting right through the terrifying atmosphere. "What do people even call you?!"
One of the high-ranking court guards, a towering, heavily armored dark knight standing beside the throne, violently slammed his spear into the dirt, furious at the disrespect.
"You ignorant humans!" the guard bellowed, his voice echoing with absolute zealous pride. "You do not even know the name of the mightiest of all?! The Greatest of all Calamities?! Bow down, for you stand before His Supreme Dark Majesty... Hontin Dekwen!"
The clearing went dead silent.
Malesh blinked. He turned the name over in his head. Salesh's translation magic worked perfectly, delivering the exact phonetic pronunciation of the Demon Lord's ancient name directly into Malesh's ears.
Hontin Dekwen.
A massive, highly irritating grin slowly spread across Malesh's face.
"Oh..." Malesh snorted, desperately trying to hold back a burst of laughter. "Hontin Dekwen... Haunting Dek-wen. Dick-wen."
Malesh looked directly at the terrifying, world-ending entity.
"So, in short, you are literally the Haunting Dicklord," Malesh laughed out loud, throwing his hands in the air. "I don't know why there are so many people in this world named with the word Dick! First, we bankrupted the Dick Prince, and now we have to deal with the scaring Dicklord!"
The End of Negotiations
Kniya aggressively rubbed his temples, finally losing his patience as the situation devolved into a chaotic shouting match.
"Malesh, can you please stop your fucking crap right now?" Kniya snapped, stepping between his Head of Production and the towering dark entity. "That is more than enough. You are just saying way too much."
Malesh threw his hands up in sheer exasperation. "I am just explaining to you, Kniya, that this is a complete and utter waste of our time! This fucking idiot is not going to understand our terms and conditions. He doesn't want a mutually beneficial trade deal. He just wants to start a pointless war and destroy the lives and the property of our labor force for absolutely no reason!"
The Demon Lord's aura flared violently, the dark energy swirling around his spiked armor like a raging hurricane. In all his thousands of years of dark conquest, no mortal had ever dared to speak to him with such raw, unfiltered disrespect. Kings had crawled on their bellies and heroes had wept in terror before his throne, yet these four humans in strange suits were treating him like an annoying middle manager.
"You little, foul-mouthed insect!" the Demon Lord roared, his voice cracking the very earth beneath their feet. "You dare to spew such vulgar blasphemy at me? You stand in the domain of absolute despair, showing off your pathetic arrogance, thinking you can defy the rules of this world?! Let us see if your insolent tongue survives when your flesh is peeled from your bones! In this battle, there is only you and me. It is time for a test, human. And it is time for you to die!"
With a terrifying, dramatic flourish, the Demon Lord slowly raised his armored index finger, pointing it directly at Malesh.
Immediately, a towering Orc Vanguard Commander stepped forward from the ranks. The beast was easily nine feet tall, covered in thick black iron plating, and wielding a massive, blood-stained battleaxe that took two normal men to lift. The Orc let out a deafening, blood-curdling war cry and charged directly at Malesh, the ground shaking with every heavy footstep.
Malesh didn't even flinch. He just let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh.
He slowly raised his right hand, positioning his thumb and middle finger.
Snap.
A blinding, supersonic beam of concentrated, hyper-pressurized radiation violently erupted from the tip of Malesh's fingers.
The sheer kinetic force of the energy beam was unfathomable. It struck the charging Orc Commander instantly, vaporizing the massive beast into a fine, red mist before his brain could even register the pain. But the beam didn't stop there.
It completely tore through the ranks of the monster army standing behind the Orc, instantly atomizing hundreds of heavily armored soldiers in a blinding flash of white light. The supersonic radiation beam continued in a perfectly straight line, violently carving a massive, vitrified trench through the muddy forest. It slammed into the base of a towering mountain miles away in the distance, violently boring a perfectly glowing, molten tunnel straight through the solid bedrock, until it finally disappeared over the horizon.
A deafening silence fell over the encampment.
Where the Orc Commander and a massive chunk of the Demon Lord's army had just been standing, there was nothing but a perfectly straight, glowing trail of molten glass and burning ozone that stretched as far as the eye could see.