Chapter 140: Poison Fangs in the Shadows

On the reconstruction site of Nuoraxien Harbor, the sound of hammers never ceased, day or night.

Giske stood at the edge of the pier, looking at the wooden piles that had been blackened by the Abyssal seawater, silent for a long time.

His fur was still stained with the salt and blood of the Shattered Star Strait, and a small piece of his left ear was missing—that had been bitten off by a Snake Demon in Crystal Horn Bay three months ago. It was a disgrace for a Gnoll to have no scars. He wasn't afraid of disgrace. He cared about something else.

Nine months. He had been fighting in the Abyssal swamps of the 1872nd plane for nine months. Over thirty thousand brothers had died, and they hadn't even touched the city walls of Hanging Spine City.

Every time they were about to break through the defensive line, demons would surge out from some unexpected direction, as if they had known his plan all along. He now suspected that it wasn't that the demons were too smart, but that someone around him was too smart.

"Where is Su Lai De?" Giske asked in a rough voice.

A Gray Dwarf craftsman pointed to the command headquarters remodeled from an old ship deep in the harbor. Giske strode over, and when he pushed the door open, Su Lai De was hunched over a map spread out on the table, marking something with a charcoal pencil. Hearing footsteps, he looked up, his silver-white hair like a handful of snow in the dim light.

"Back?" Su Lai De's tone was as flat as if he were asking about the weather.

Giske sat heavily on a wooden box, unbuckling his notched scimitar and throwing it onto the table. The blade hit the wooden board with a dull thud. "Nine months. Supplies for one hundred thousand people, and you only gave me enough for sixty thousand. Do you know how many of my men died?"

Su Lai De put down the charcoal pencil and leaned back in his chair. He didn't answer immediately, instead pushing the map spread on the table toward Giske.

"Count them yourself."

The map was filled with charcoal markings: circles representing villages that needed to be guarded, crosses representing locations that had been attacked, and triangles representing rebel strongholds. They were dense, extending from the Dragon Spine Mountains all the way to the Bohe Plain.

Next to some markings were numbers, the casualty counts. Next to some markings, there was only one word: "Empty." It meant that the village no longer had any people.

Su Lai De rolled up the map, tied it with a leather cord, and put it back in the drawer. His movements were very slow, as if waiting for Giske to digest that information.

"The troops I can mobilize are only three under-strength garrison battalions and twenty thousand Goblin guerrillas. You know Goblins—they're okay for ambushes, but field battles? They'd be chased by a group of wild rabbits."

Silence.

Giske lowered his head, staring at his notched scimitar. The blade was still stained with dried black blood, indistinguishable whether it was from demons or his brothers. He thought of the face of that young Gnoll—what was his name? He had followed him around for four years, and he hadn't even remembered his name.

That kid had charged too far forward, and a Snake Demon had circled from the flank, slicing off half his head with one strike. When he fell, his eyes were still open.

Over thirty thousand brothers. He couldn't name a single one.

"I know what you're thinking," Su Lai De's voice came from across the table, without comfort, only a statement. "You lost thirty thousand people and feel it's a loss. But the Grand Duke's territory doesn't have extra troops to replenish yours.

Either you take the remaining people and continue to waste away in the Abyss until the last brother dies under the walls of Hanging Spine City, or you come back and slaughter those bastards who are setting fires in our home one by one."

Giske looked up.

Su Lai De was finally looking at him. There were deep blue-black circles under those light-colored eyes—the kind that came from not closing them for several days.

"You choose."

Giske was silent for a long time. Then he spat on the ground and cursed: "Damn it."

He didn't say "Okay" or "Fine," but he buckled the notched scimitar back to his waist.

Su Lai De pulled a piece of parchment from the drawer and pushed it toward Giske.

"Over at the Sanjiaozhou, Karawa is working on his things and needs a batch of Kuo-toa souls. Take your men to catch them, and by the way, let those blind bandits know that the Gnolls of the Grand Duke's territory aren't dead yet."

Giske picked up the parchment, scanned the dense requirements on it, and frowned. "Kuo-toa souls? That stuff can be used as souls? Those lunatics even dare to create their own gods; what value could their souls have?"

"Karawa wants them," Su Lai De said. "You don't need to worry about the rest."

Giske didn't ask again. He folded the parchment and tucked it into his chest, picked up his scimitar, and strode out. When he reached the door, he paused, not turning back.

"Su Lai De."

"Hmm."

"Next time the supplies aren't enough, tell me in advance. Don't wait until I've lost men for you to say it."

The door closed.

Su Lai De looked at the closed door, silent for a while. His fingers were still pressing on the drawer, the one containing the map. He didn't pull it open, just pressed down.

After a long time, he picked up the charcoal pencil again. The paper was blank; he hadn't drawn anything. He just held the charcoal pencil in his hand and sat there.

There was no moon in the night of the Sanjiaozhou.

Karawa crouched on a protruding black reef at the edge of the swamp, his hood pulled very low, revealing only a pale jawline. He was waiting. He had been waiting for three nights.

Thirty meters ahead was a pile of rubble half-submerged in putrid water. In the center of the pile was a narrow gap, barely large enough for a calf-sized creature to crawl into.

The edges of the gap were smooth, worn down by repeated entry and exit. Scattered around were broken carapaces and shriveled fish-man corpses, and the air was filled with a strong acidic stench, mixed with the sulfurous smell unique to the swamp.

He had observed for a long time. Living in the nest was a young Bone-Spike Toad Demon, less than two meters long, the bone spikes on its back not yet fully hardened, the tips shimmering with a pale blue-white.

It was too weak, ranking at the very bottom of the Toad Demon hierarchy, only able to scavenge the remains left by other predators. It hid in the stone gap during the day and only dared to move around the nest at night, always trembling, shrinking back at the slightest disturbance.

Karawa's target was this one.

He had crouched in the vicinity for ten days, figuring out the basic rules of the Toad Demon hierarchy. These Abyssal creatures were different from the beasts of the material plane; they had no souls.

Not "souls polluted," but from the very beginning, they had none. They lived relying on the instincts bestowed by the Abyss—predating, killing, devouring their own kind—but they were forever stuck outside that invisible threshold.

Karawa had learned this in the Grand Duke's laboratory. When Sakavi was researching Necromancy, he had experimented with various demons and finally reached a conclusion: for demons to break through the shackles of instinct and gain true self-awareness, they had to devour a complete soul.

The souls of beasts could only barely allow them to reach High-Level; the souls of magical beasts could support them to Master Rank. To continue upward, such as reaching Legendary Rank and possessing independent wisdom and will, one had to use the souls of intelligent beings.

Among the Bone-Spike Toad Demons of the Sanjiaozhou, those that had lived for over a hundred years and were over six meters long had each devoured the souls of more than one intelligent being. As for where their souls came from, Karawa didn't want to know.

But this young Toad Demon in front of him hadn't even touched the soul of a beast. It was too weak, so weak that it had no qualification to participate in the struggle, only able to survive on the fringes, and precisely because of this, it was the easiest to control.

Karawa carefully took a crystal ball the size of a fist from the leather pouch at his waist.

Sealed inside the crystal ball was a gray-white, slowly wriggling mist—a Kuo-toa soul, modified, of course. He had hired a few bold adventurers and ambushed them in the abandoned ruins at the edge of the swamp for three days to get it.

He tucked the crystal ball into a shallow puddle next to the rubble pile, covering it gently with withered branches and rotten mud, leaving only a small corner exposed. Then he threw a swamp lizard that had been poisoned to death nearby.

Then he retreated behind the reef and continued to wait.

The first night, nothing happened. The young Toad Demon poked its head out of the stone gap, sniffed the air, and dragged away the swamp lizard.

It noticed the crystal ball, stopped by the puddle for a while, its cloudy eyeballs turning as if hesitating, and then it shrank back into the stone gap.

Karawa didn't move.

The second night, the Toad Demon came out again. This time it didn't rush to eat, but crawled straight toward the puddle. It licked the surface of the crystal ball with its tongue, feeling that strange aura.

Its eyeballs lit up, that green fluorescence brighter than before, and it lay beside the crystal ball for a long time, refusing to leave.

Karawa still didn't move.

The third night, the moon was swallowed by clouds.

Karawa stood up from behind the reef, walked to the puddle, dug the crystal ball out of the mud, and held it in his palm. He didn't hide. The Toad Demon poked half its body out of the stone gap, its cloudy eyeballs staring at the crystal ball in his hand.

Karawa placed the crystal ball on the ground and took three steps back.

The Toad Demon crawled out. Its movements were much faster than the previous two days, even carrying a kind of urgent, not-so-dignified panic.

It opened its mouth—a giant maw that split to its chest, filled with tiny, backward-curving barbs—and its purple-black long tongue shot out, coiled around the crystal ball, and retracted. It swallowed it whole.

Karawa didn't move.

The Toad Demon's body stiffened violently. Its limbs began to twitch, and the bone spikes on its back vibrated violently, emitting a fine, metallic friction sound.

The green fluorescence in its eye sockets flickered crazily, dimming and brightening like a lamp about to burn out its filament. It opened its mouth, wanting to spray acid, but its esophagus seemed blocked. It wanted to lash its tongue, but its muscles seemed frozen.

Karawa crouched down, reached out that pale hand, and pressed it on the top of the Toad Demon's head. The scales were cold and slippery, like touching a stone just pulled from the water.

"Obey," he whispered.

The Toad Demon's eyeballs flickered crazily. Karawa felt a faint mental fluctuation transmitted from his palm—not language, but something more primitive, more like instinct: fear, anger, and hunger.

That Kuo-toa soul was struggling in the depths of its consciousness, fighting with its instinct. It wanted to devour that soul, and that soul wanted to occupy its shell; neither would let the other go.

Karawa closed his eyes and channeled a trace of his own mental power through his palm—not much, just a trace, just enough to tip the scales.

The Toad Demon's eyeballs stopped flickering.

The green fluorescence slowly stabilized, turning into a rhythmic pulsation like a heartbeat—one, one, and one more.

The Toad Demon lowered its head, resting its jaw in the mud like a submissive slave.

Karawa stood up. His right hand was trembling slightly; controlling the process of soul devouring consumed more mental power than he had expected. A trace of black blood seeped from the corner of his mouth; he wiped it away with the back of his hand and glanced at it, as if confirming he was still alive.

The Toad Demon was still lying on the ground, its green eyeballs staring at him. Karawa reached out and patted it lightly on the head—not a caress, but a confirmation—confirming it was still there.

"Go," he said.

The Toad Demon slowly crawled back into the stone gap. Its movements were faster and steadier than before; that Kuo-toa soul was merging with its body, and it would become stronger, smarter, and more ambitious.

It would start hunting in the swamp, devouring more small demons, accumulating power—perhaps in a few months, perhaps a year, it would grow harder scales and longer bone spikes, and then it would start challenging those stronger than itself, climbing all the way up.

Karawa didn't need it to become very strong. He only needed it to live long enough and climb high enough. High enough to enter the field of vision of that old thing that had lived for who knew how many years and was entrenched in the deepest part of the swamp. High enough to become a chess piece in that chess game.

He turned and left. After walking for a while, he stopped by a shallow pool of putrid water and crouched down to wash the mud off his hands. The water surface reflected his face; under the hood, it was as pale as a dead man's.

Karawa stood up, pulled his hood back into place, and the reflection on the water surface shattered, crushed by the tip of his boot.

He didn't look back. Behind him, in the darkness of the Sanjiaozhou, something was slowly waking up. ===== CHAPTER 141 =====