ALL NOVEL Chapter 353: Fiery Pepper
It was a quiet city, with nobody in its streets; it was as if everyone collectively decided to leave.
At this time, boom!
A huge boom shattered the windows of some buildings; fortunately or unfortunately, most people were too poor to have glass windows. Only those few houses and buildings with glass windows were damaged; as for the rest, they only shook but with no noticeable damage.
After about 30 seconds, the booms from far away disappeared, returning the city back to its quiet state.
...
It has one head, two hands, and two feet, a thin and long tail, two big horns on top of its head, and bright red skin. Its height is only about 1.6 meters; compared to the tall demons around, it looks tiny and weak. But in fact, all the tall demons around were terrified of this tiny demon.
Its name is Fiery Pepper; this is the nickname it chose for itself. Despite its small physique, Fiery Pepper is the leader of a demonic army. Its blood is very pure, at 75%; it was one of the strongest demons of the East Forest Demonic City, acting as one of the lieutenants of the demon duke of that city.
However, a while ago, the demon duke was killed by one of the demon lieutenants; it was an assassination long planned by four of the demon lieutenants. Fiery Pepper was not one of the four conspiring demons, but once they successfully assassinated the demon duke, it didn’t even consider revenge; there was no point in revenge, especially because Fiery Pepper was not particularly loyal to the demon duke. The reason it was listening to orders of the demon duke was solely because the demon duke was supported by a demon king; if it wasn’t for the demon king, Fiery Pepper would have challenged the demon duke long ago.
The reason the four demon lieutenants dared to assassinate a demon duke who a demon king supported was actually simple: another demon king had their back. After the assassination, the four demon lieutenants invited Fiery Pepper to join them, but it refused.
The six demon lieutenants decided to part ways; the four loyal to the demon king went on their way, while Fiery Pepper and the other independent demon lieutenants went their own way.
Fiery Pepper is an ambitious demon who plans to establish a large-scale medium city. It already has a location in mind: the area between the two big demonic cities. The two big demonic cities in this area barely maintain peace, so setting up a city here may seem like suicide. But that is what normal humans may think. Fiery Pepper thinks the area between big demonic cities is the perfect location. It can take advantage of both; greater risks mean greater rewards.
The perfect location for setting up the new large-scale demonic city is this place, where Hard Summer City is located.
...
Looking at the demons around, Fiery Pepper asked in demon language, "Is it over?"
One of the demon sergeants, with 55% blood purity, said respectfully, "The forcefield is stronger than expected; it would take a few more hours."
Shaking its head, Fiery Pepper said, "Send all demons below 50% to the battlefield; warn them not to use offensive spells. I want it to be done in less than two hours!"
The demon sergeant nodded and went out to send the demons to the battlefield as ordered.
The power of demons depends not only on purity but on the amount of conflict that exists in the bloodline.
First, what does a 51% purity mean? The answer is simple; it means the demon's bloodline has 51% of a single bloodline, while the remaining 49% of its blood is mixed. The power of the demon in question would depend a lot on what other bloodlines make up the 49%.
If the 49% mixed part contains too many different and conflicting bloodlines, it would be actively damaging. In severe cases, the 49% could, in effect, nearly completely nullify the 51%; it can make a 51% purity demon as weak as a 2% purity demon because the conflicting 49% would be subtracted from the 51% pure part.
But the example above is the most extreme example; most demons aren’t that unlucky.
Assume that the 51% pure part of the bloodline is related to fire control, and of the 49% impure part, 30% for heat control and 19% for wind control. In that case, the impure 49% not only doesn’t weaken the 51% pure portion but also boosts its power. A demon with this kind of bloodline mix may be as strong as an ordinary 55% or even a 60% bloodline purity.
Of course, the situation mentioned above is extremely lucky; most cases are something in between the worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario.
Still, in calculating a demon's effective bloodline purity, it’s a safe bet to subtract 20% of the demon's nominal bloodline impurity from its nominal bloodline purity. For example, the average 65% demon would most likely have an effective bloodline purity of around 58 as a result of the impurity. This is also the reason that there are so many demons whose blood is so muddled that they fail to even reach adulthood before their death.
For example, a demon with 10% bloodline purity and 90% mixed bloodline would have an average effective blood purity of negative 8. Such demons with negative effective purity are no different from beasts; they are not smarter than pets and are so dumb they can’t even cast a single bloodline spell in their whole life.
Fiery Pepper, for a demon with 75% purity, is quite strong; the 25% impure part of its bloodline does not conflict heavily with the 75% pure part of its bloodline. As such, its effective bloodline purity is actually as high as 77%!
Seeing the demon sergeant go away to carry out its command, Fiery Pepper closed its eyes and waited. As a boss demon, it wouldn’t fight personally unless the situation gets bad; it’s not low-class enough to personally fight every war.
...
After the next batch of demons were sent to the battlefield, the demon army began advancing much quicker. Even though, as ordered by Fiery Pepper, the new demons weren't allowed to cast offensive spells, the spells they could cast, such as cursing, blessing, and protection spells, eased the jobs of other demons by a big margin.
Fiery Pepper was so keen on not using powerful spells because once demons use spells, nothing will be left of the city; the entire mountain may turn into lava land. He plans on creating a large-scale demonic city and prefers not to ruin the land.
By the time the new batch of demons arrived, though, all humans were either dead or ran away; there was nobody to massacre or defend against anymore. The sole obstacle was the red forcefield, which resisted every step of the way. Even with nobody to control it, the red forcefield still resisted fiercely, killing many muddle-blooded demons until it ran out of charge.
Of course, after the 50% and below demons arrived, they started casting shielding spells on the muddle-blooded demons, which enabled them to resist the red forcefield. Even with all that, progress was not fast enough to meet the 2-hour deadline set by demon lieutenant Fiery Pepper.
"Push forward!" the sergeant sent by Fiery Pepper shouted at magic caster demons while taking out the controlling token of muddle-blooded demons and ordering them to push forward regardless of casualties.
The muddle-blooded demons are like pets; they are dumb. It’s not possible to control them using ordinary means. For that reason, Fiery Pepper has implanted 'control formations' on every single one of the muddle-blooded demons. Once someone obtains the controlling token, it will become possible to order and control the muddle-blooded demons. Of course, a lot would be lost in the process. Fighting while being forced by a formation means the muddle-blooded demons wouldn’t be able to fight according to their fighting instincts; that would severely weaken them, but it would be a better alternative than letting them be free. The muddle-blooded demons are too dumb to distinguish foe from friend; if left free, they would tear each other apart before reaching any human city.
With the sergeant's encouragement, the muddle-blooded demons began rushing forward and again started having casualties. After all, the demon magicians weren’t quick enough to cast defensive spells on every single demon; they were able to do it before, but after the muddle-blooded demons began rushing, they lost the ability to do so.
The demon sergeant was entirely happy to see increased casualties; compared to disobeying an order of Fiery Pepper, the death of even a thousand muddle-blooded demons was not bad.
It’s said that demons get scarier as their blood purity increases; that is entirely true, according to the demon sergeant's experience. He wouldn’t want to upset Fiery Pepper, and he knows of no demon sergeants who dare to do so.