The corrupted demons, once so mindless in their charge, now hesitated at the edge of the scorched trench Asmodeus had torn through the ice. Their limbs twitched, and frozen bodies shuddered, as if so buried instinct warned them of danger:
That man burns what cannot die.
Asmodeus lowered his hand slowly, blood still trailing from his fingertips.
The air was thick with fog, misted red by ruptured bodies and fire-stead snow. And in that pause, that mont of stillness, Asmodeus spoke.
"Split the field. Vinea, take the centre. Lumina—web the east ridge. Asmodea, I want thorns at every chokepoint. Levia, anchor the left flank."
He didn't shout.
He didn't need to.
Each woman answered with action.
Asmodeus could fight, but he needed to conserve his strength for when she appeared.
***
Vinea, eager to earn his affection again, rushed to the centre, drawing her sword and locking her eyes on the largest of the deford horrors.
She didn't need formation.
She was the formation.
Behind her, dozens of demon knights ford an inverted triangle, wrapping around her, while granting her the best support possible.
Demons rushed her in a scattered wave, and she t them in silence—each movent a clean, vicious arc of force. Her boots crushed ice.
Her sword cracked through ribs like they were brittle wood. Her long hair trailed behind her like a war banner as she pushed deeper into the heart of the chaos.
Two of the deford creatures jumped at her from both sides as she stepped between them and cut across the sky with a horizontal arc of silver light.
Their heads fell apart, ice fog spraying across her face. She didn't blink.
"Try harder," she muttered.
***
Different from the aggressive Vinea, Levia stood like a fortress at the edge of the left flank. Her shield—nearly as tall as she was—glowed with divine sigils, and every ti she slamd it into the ground, a pulse of unholy magic expanded outward, pushing back the corrupted frost trying to root itself beneath their boots.
All the knights behind her ford a half-circle, safe inside her glowing barrier with similar kite shields, half the size of their bodies, so even smaller than their shields.
A demon lunged from behind a boulder of ice, black limbs stretching unnaturally.
Levia turned and threw her black spear without a word.
The weapon humd through the air, struck the beast mid-leap, and pinned it to a frozen pillar.
"Energise your blades, now," she ordered, turning back to her n. "No blade touches these creatures unless you hear it hum."
***
Lumina was already on the move, climbing her silken constructs like scaffolding. She danced across narrow lines of web strung between ice pillars, hands moving faster than her voice as she laced the battlefield in invisible threads.
Every few seconds, her fingers snapped downward, and a demon would halt mid-run—its limbs bound in a flash, yanked upward by high-tension silk.
Then the cold would snap the thread, dropping the creature into a pit she'd dug monts earlier.
Her traps weren't crude.
But a layered and psychological maze, designed to disorientate and confuse.
One demon turned and ran.
It triggered a decoy web.
The real trap snapped around it from the side, dragging it into a spike-lined crevice of frozen roots.
Lumina licked a trace of snow from her lip and whispered:
"Run, little worms. The spider doesn't need a web to find you.
***
Asmodea didn't move, sitting on the soft, bouncing head of a black rose, as she controlled her magic and vines in the distance.
Her vines slithered from her arms like living snakes, burrowing beneath the snow before erupting in crimson explosions. Wherever she guided her flowers, the frost hissed in retreat, unable to maintain form in the wake of her magic.
She extended a hand, and a rose of fla blood atop the snow, then exploded outward in petals of blood and fire.
Three demons vaporised on impact, their frozen forms shattered into spinning mist.
But she didn't stop. The prize was Asmodeus, to be pampered by him, which was worth sothing good enough for her.
She twirled, grinning, her feet leaving prints of smoking slush behind her.
"Co on," she cooed to the largest monster approaching her line. "Try to touch , ugly. See what happens when you bleed near my roots."
It lunged.
Her vines caught it mid-air.
Spikes burst from beneath its stomach—impaled it once, then again, then again, until the weight of the thing collapsed into her grasp like a gift.
She kissed her fingers and blew the corpse a mock farewell.
***
And above it all, watching like a god among champions, stood Asmodeus.
He didn't give further orders.
He didn't need to.
His won weren't just beautiful. They weren't just strong.
They were extensions of his will.
Every movent on the battlefield reflected that—from the cries of the enemy to the rising morale of his soldiers, who now cheered every ti one woman struck sothing down.
They didn't see four won.
They saw the arms of their king.
"Good," Asmodeus murmured, standing at the centre as the corrupted demons began to break and scatter. "This is what a kingdom looks like."
His smile grew while watching the battlefield beco more chaotic. Fire and mist spread as the won fought harder, growing as warriors and won.
However, if a monster almost killed or hurt one of his knights, the warriors of won... Asmodeus would launch dozens of bloody spears and pin the enemy down.
He no longer prioritised his won, but all the people who fought for him, the eyes of the demon warriors filled with excitent and awe when he saved them.
The land beca scorched, with steam rising beneath the boots of soldiers, corpses cracking from inner frost as vines, silk, and steel carved their way forward.
For a mont, it looked like victory.
Then the ground shattered.
A tremor split through the frozen earth, fracturing the outer line near the east slope.
Soldiers tumbled into the cracks—several swallowed by sudden sinkholes of snapping ice. From the heart of the rupture, a black figure began to rise.
Asmodea sent Thousands of sharp vines that wrapped around the falling n, tossing them to safety, but then a monster appeared.
Massive.
Twisted.
"...what is that," he muttered, the demon large, but it gave off a dangerous aura, beyond anything he had t.
Its horns had been frozen solid, jagged like icebergs, each spike wrapped in frostbite.
One of its arms was twice the size of the other, wrapped in glacial plates that hissed with blizzard air. Its flesh had blackened from prolonged exposure, cracking open with every motion, leaking fog instead of blood.
It let out a deep groan—inhuman, echoing.
Then it charged straight toward the command ridge.
With each step, the ground shook, causing the warriors to falter. The thing wasn't fast, but it didn't slow. It trampled ice pits, shrugged off vines, and battered aside silk walls like paper. Spears shattered against its hide, while the monster grew larger, hamring its chest.
Asmodea threw a firebomb vine at its feet—it exploded in a halo of crimson, but the warlord kept moving, one arm dragging across the snow, leaving a trail of black frost that pulsed and spread.
"Move!" Levia barked, shield up, planting herself between the beast and the command ridge.
But the creature was too big. Too heavy.
And it wasn't slowing down.
Asmodeus stepped forward, prepared to help... but then he saw Levia's body rushing forward, her agile steps pushing off the ice, using the lack of friction to ski towards the monster.
"Fall back," he said. "All of you."
The group of won looked at Levia and then at Asmodeus as if begging him.
However, he flicked his wrist. "Help the knights and warriors. I will help Levia."
He stood alone now.
The thing roared—not with hatred, but with emptiness. Its eyes were hollow sockets. Its soul had long since thawed and collapsed.
It leapt.
And Asmodeus raised his hand.
Blood poured from his palm. Not a spell circle—sothing older. Sothing buried beneath his magic... similar to the sigil.
But it didn't matter—when the sigil pulsed, so did his magic, so Asmodeus gathered dozens of sharp spears in the air and pointed them at the huge monstrosity.
Asmodeus clenched his fists, sending out the spears
"Burn."
The black fla blood, not in an explosion, but in consumption.
The mont the sphere touched the demon's chest, it vanished.
So did the demon's arm.
Then it's chest.
Then its legs, its head, its roar—all swallowed, not lted. Erased, as though it had never been.
Where it stood, nothing remained.
Not ash.
Not blood.
Just a glass crater—a wide, smooth bowl of ice fused with shadow, glowing faintly at the edges like cooled obsidian.
The cold returned with a vengeance, wind screaming in protest as it rushed back into the space the black fla had left behind.
Though he managed to defeat the huge monster, Levia looked back, upset. The sigil on his chest glowed again for a heartbeat, then faded back into dormancy.
"Phew..."
With the loss of the huge demon, the deford monsters pulled back, all the while looking at Asmodeus with wary and doubtful eyes.
"There you go, now... show why I chose you all."
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