ALL NOVEL Chapter 355: Revenge
No matter how powerful, one will die at the age of 100. Even pure-blooded demons, who won't age after reaching adulthood, will die after a hundred years. This is the world's law; it cannot be broken, and there is no way to circumvent it.
The limit on lifespan makes time the most valuable asset anyone has. There is no such thing as years of closed-door cultivation. Life is a race to accomplish as much as possible before one's time ends.
Fiery Pepper was a young, 25-year-old demon. Now, after a year, he is still considered young at only 26. He still has over 70 years left to live, and he plans to make the best of it.
...
"What? You failed?" Fiery Pepper looked angrily at Sergeant Bullhorn in front of him.
"Master, please, spare me! I did everything I could. I even invented a new spell to increase the fertilization rate and the chance of conceiving twins. But there were too few female humans. Plea..." Bullhorn was interrupted before he could finish.
"Shut up! I don’t want to hear it! You failed the task I gave you; that’s all I need to know. You were supposed to double the human population. I wanted 1,500 tiny humans this year. But there are only 800. You’re down by 700."
Fiery Pepper continued, "You are going to make up the numbers with your own body!"
"Master, please spare me!" Sergeant Bullhorn didn’t understand what his master meant, but he still begged for forgiveness. He did everything to complete the task, even raiding a faraway human village, but there were just not enough humans to make up the numbers. Even human villages have powerful defenses. If his master had given him an army, he might have succeeded, but he was expected to complete the task with just a few demon subordinates. That was simply not achievable.
"Split: 700," Fiery Pepper cast a spell.
Bullhorn, who was standing there with his head down a moment ago, broke apart and fell to the ground. He was split into 700 pieces! The pieces wriggled and moved around, trying to reattach themselves, but no matter how much they tried, each was an independent piece and couldn’t reattach to the others.
"Hahaha, it's always funny when I see it. I sentence you to five years in this state; get used to it!" Fiery Pepper looked at the scene in front of him in a good mood.
The Split spell is one of his own inventions. The spell is miraculous; it can split living organisms into smaller pieces without killing them. Despite being split, the pieces still have one brain, which retains complete control over the pieces despite having no physical connection with them. Because of the bizarre mechanism of the spell, even though the pieces are not bleeding or injured, the brain registers them as injuries, causing unimaginable pain. The pain is equivalent to being chopped into hundreds of pieces without losing consciousness, making it such torture that even demons would wish to die.
The many pieces that used to form Bullhorn trembled and became sluggish. Obviously, the pain was so intense that even as a demon, Bullhorn couldn’t tolerate it and was beginning to pass out.
"State: Wide Awake," Fiery Pepper noticed that Bullhorn was about to pass out, so he cast the Wide Awake spell to prevent him from losing consciousness. He injected so much energy into the spell that it would last for months.
"Come in!" Fiery Pepper called to the demon waiting outside.
A blue demon, 5 meters tall, with two pairs of arms and a horse's lower body, entered. He glanced around and trembled. He was good at keeping his poker face, but even he was shaken by the scene in the room. Bullhorn's fate was most likely to be his own in the next few minutes.
"Report!" ordered Fiery Pepper.
"My master, please let me explain! I set up a robust lab outside Fiery Sun City. We also had the 'raw materials' needed; everything was ready. The only issue was the formula. The two big demonic cities refused my requests and didn’t meet me. They said that my master has to visit personally," said Sergeant Deep Sea.
"Cut the nonsense; you failed. That’s all that I heard," Fiery Pepper shook his head.
"My master! I didn’t fail! I did everything you ordered me to do. The only issue is that the demon kings don’t see me as worthy. Only my master can be on equal footing with them and negotiate. I could have gone for inferior formulas, but those weren’t worthy of my master," Deep Sea said hurriedly.
Fiery Pepper said, "Hmm, actually, you are not wrong. I should meet one of those demon kings to negotiate terms with them."
Deep Sea heard that and felt slightly relieved; his master seemed to have accepted his excuse.
"But, you still failed! 'True Hell!'" Fiery Pepper cast a spell.
"No, my master! Noooooo!" Deep Sea screamed. He tried running away, but his body was locked in place. From the outside, no one would have noticed any difference; he was just standing there motionless.
But his screams suggested otherwise.
"NOoooOOoooooOoooo; PlEasE!"
"AaaaAAaAAA, My mAster!"
"PleAseEEee!"
He continued screaming, his eyes bloodshot, almost crying blood, and his pupils dilated.
The True Hell spell is quite famous; it is an illusion spell. Any intelligent being affected by it would suffer from their worst nightmare. If one fears death, they would die a thousand times a second and feel each death with all their existence. If one fears cockroaches, they would be thrown into a sea of cockroaches, forced to eat them, and so on. It may not sound too bad—after all, if one knows it’s all an illusion, one shouldn’t fear it—but that’s not the case. Once hit by the spell, the target becomes confused and can’t distinguish reality from the illusion.
Annoyed by the constant screams, Fiery Pepper rolled his eyes and cast a Silence spell on Deep Sea.
"You are sentenced to one year of True Hell. Your punishment is lighter because you didn’t fail as badly as Bullhorn," said Fiery Pepper. Of course, Deep Sea didn’t hear any of it.
"Assistant? Come in," ordered Fiery Pepper.
The assistant, a demon with a pair of purple horns, entered while bowing.
"Set up a meeting with Skyfire Demon King."
"Yes, master!" The assistant bowed and left.
Skyfire Demon King is one of the two lords of the flesh business.
Fiery Pepper didn’t like asking for permission from others, but the other party was a demon king. Even Fiery Pepper didn’t dare to start the flesh business without approval from at least one of the two giants. Also, without a good formula, starting a flesh business is just a dream.
Stealing the formula is a non-starter; the only groups that have the real formula are the two demon kings. Stealing it from them would be suicidal. There are a few large demonic cities that have inferior formulas that can produce an acceptable final product. Originally, Fiery Pepper expected Deep Sea to steal or buy one of those formulas. But he didn’t. Now that Fiery Pepper is going to act personally, it would no longer be satisfied with those inferior formulas. It would negotiate with Skyfire Demon King and get the original formula, or at least a formula not much inferior to the original.
...
Setting up a meeting with a demon king is easier said than done. The demon assistant sent many letters, but there was no response at all.
Fiery Pepper became frustrated and wanted to punish the assistant but then stopped himself. His anger issues have been getting worse lately. He had already punished 7 of his 13 sergeants. Now, the forces under his command are very strained, mainly because so many were being punished.
Fiery Pepper has always had a very short temper. He may look calm and chill, but in fact, he is the furthest from it. One random wrong word can send him from chill to furious.
In the end, he didn’t punish the assistant; instead, he wrote the letter personally and signed his name on it.
Finally, Skyfire Demon King responded, but the response was less than ideal.
"From Skyfire to Fiery Sun: We aren’t interested in the proposed deal." That was it; there was nothing more written. Skyfire only wrote one line and didn’t even bother to write anything else. In fact, Fiery Pepper doubted that Skyfire herself even saw the letter; it may have been written by one of her staff.
"Damn it! How dare they treat me like this? I will destroy you! Destroy you! Destroy you!" Fiery Pepper repeated "Destroy you" at least a thousand times before finally stopping.
"Assistant?" he called.
"Master?" The assistant came in.
"Send a letter to the humans! I want to collude with them to destroy that damned Skyfire!" Fiery Pepper shouted.
The assistant's face twitched momentarily, but he regained his composure and said, "Yes, master!" and then left. There was so much wrong with colluding with humans, but the assistant didn’t dare say anything.
"You dare ignore me? I will return the favor a thousand times!" Fiery Pepper gritted his teeth.
"Assistant!" Fiery Pepper shouted again.
The poor assistant, who was halfway, quickly came in again.
"Yes, master?"
"Take those 800 tiny humans and send them with the collusion letter to the humans as a gesture of goodwill. Invite their leader to the camp. Write to them that we will release all human hostages if they meet with me," said Fiery Pepper.
"Yes, master!" The assistant bowed and left.
"If I can’t do it, you shouldn’t either." Fiery pepper shouted, directed at Skyfire demon king.
Fiery Pepper was rash, often making sudden, nonsensical decisions. But it wasn’t a total idiot. It knew that the humans would never agree to any deal if they knew that Fiery Sun City is continuing to boil and process tiny humans for flesh. In its attempt to collude with the humans, Fiery Pepper directly gave up the entire flesh business.
Fiery Pepper's end goal is to kill the demons that made him suffer. How dare Skyfire treat a high-class demon like itself like that? Fiery Pepper would not rest easy until It takes revenge!