“You should have made a bath…” Silver grumpily said over a bowl of oatmeal.
“You should have made your own bed.” I shot back.
We had all woken up at roughly the same time, thanks to Scale practically knocking everyone off the bed after he woke up, and had made our way to breakfast. Despite what I said to Silver, I did make a mental note to create some method of washing myself in the future. Perhaps a river or lake? Would be useful for any aquatic monsters I get in the future, as well as just populating with fish for food.
Some species of mundane wildlife, that is to say non-monster creatures, could be created with [Demon Lord’s Castle]. They would even automatically replenish themselves at a set rate depending on how much spirit power you spend. Not only wildlife, but other forms of natural resources could be placed inside a demon lord’s domain. I had asked Silver about her forest earlier, and apparently it was a non-replenishing variant. You could still regrow trees naturally of course, but it would happen over the course of years rather than months.
After breakfast, we headed to the lounge where Ivercel was waiting for us. We had taken our time eating so we ended up being the last ones to arrive.
“Excellent, everyone is here on time. I’d imagine you are all wondering what exactly this lesson will be. Simply put, I will be taking you all into the spirit world to discuss, among other things, the hunting of monsters.” And with that said, he took us all to the spirit gate in the main courtyard.
“We will all of course be going as a group, however I haven’t yet taught you how to use gates with others. There are multiple ways to do so. The simplest, as a few of you have already found-” Ivercel looked at my group knowingly, “-is to maintain physical contact and let one member of the group take the lead. This method is a bit inefficient for obvious reasons, and is only ever used when a demon lord is trying to bring a monster somewhere, as most monsters cannot use spirit gates normally.”
“The other way is the way normally used when demon lords travel together. If one were to concentrate when using a spirit gate, they can sometimes feel the path left behind by other demon lords who had recently used the same gate. Following that path takes only a mere force of will. I happen to possess a skill that lets me use spirit gates despite not being a demon lord, so I will be leading you all today. Don’t let yourself get left behind please.”
Ivercel then stepped through the gate. Having already tried the easier method last night, my group and I weren’t super nervous about trying the method that was only a step up in difficulty, and quickly followed after him.
Sure enough, with only a bit of concentration, finding his path was easy. It was like trailing your hand through water and trying to feel which direction the water flowed. All I had to do was find the strongest current and that would be the most recent one.
When I stepped out of the gate, I found myself in a… perfectly normal landscape. Hard, rocky ground interspersed with massive, twisting trees, and a dark purple sky with a small white dot representing that it was day.
Okay, maybe this wasn’t normal for humans, but all of my inherited memories were from monsters, and monsters lived almost their entire lives inside the spirit world. Probably worth mentioning that the sky over the Grand Demon Lord’s castle was pitch black at all times, with no sign of where the daylight came from.
After everyone had stepped through the portal, Ivercel turned to address his class.
“Welcome to the spirit world. You should all already be rather familiar with it, as memories of monsters born in the spirit world are the most common ones to inherit, but I will go over the basics, as well as one or two things you wouldn’t know because they are a bit more unique to demon lords, and inheriting the memories of another demon lord is especially rare.”
I personally hadn’t noticed any memories from demon lords, as most of mine seemed to come either from various non-intelligent monsters, or from a particular gnoll who popped up often in my mind.
The gnoll's memories were rather disjointed and out of order, so I had no real clue what his life had been like, outside of the fact that I knew he was enslaved at some point. The gnoll had even had such a deep hatred of slavery because of it that even I felt my blood boil a bit at the thought of it.
“For starters, a large section of the spirit world has been cut away to separate you from the older demon lords. All of your domains are anchored somewhere within this space. Of course, once the year ends, this space will be reconnected to the rest of the spirit world, and the older demon lords will be able to interact with you all.” Ivercel said, continuing his explanation.
That was… fascinating. So the Grand Demon Lord could even cut entire chunks out of a world huh? The more I learned about him, the more I wondered what he possibly couldn’t do. What even motivates someone with that kind of power? Does he even have any kind of motivation, or is he perhaps so far removed from the lifestyle of normal creatures that he no longer requires motivation in the way I would understand it.
Also, what would you see at the edge of the cut off space? Does it drop off into nothingness? Or maybe there is a wall of fog that you just can’t walk through, as fog walls seemed to be a running theme with the spirit world.
“You will be able to tell where a domain is located by seeing a large fog bank, practically identical to the ones surrounding your domain. Knowing what surrounds your domain, and where the domains of other demon lords are is extremely important, as monsters and even other demon lords will fight wars with demon lords, and the most common way to transport an army into your domain is to simply walk in through the fog.”
Finding out the closest domains to my own would become a priority it seemed. As well as finding out where the domains of my friends were. Do demon lords expand beyond their domains at all? It made sense, and while the memories I could currently access didn’t immediately confirm it, they did provide some evidence of it.
“But enough of that for now. I had something more exciting planned than lectures today. It was mentioned before that you would need to kill monsters in order to make yourself and your creatures stronger, as well as to gain more spirit power to summon more creatures and improve your domain. So, why don’t we have ourselves a hunt?” Ivercel grinned violently, and I felt my pulse quicken as instincts that were not naturally my own broke to the surface.
a good plan for the battle royal would be to simply not spend a lot of energy on their domain and instead spend it on monsters (including the other 4 not actually creating beds for themselves, but crashing on gem's bed for the time until said battle)
So some demon lords have wars against each others, how typical. And then i guess there will also be human "heroes" as well and the united humanity against all demon lords etc.
okay ill admit it is a preeeeeetty basic setup lmao but there is more nuance than that. Demon lords arent going to be inherently evil nor will humans be inherently good (im also not going just making the humans evil route either cause thats ewie)
Part 18 is about at the right length to release, but there hasn't been any reaaaal action yet (tho something kinda cool has happened) I think imma keep writing it until some juicy stuff happens and just have the next chapter be a kinda long one
?