Clan Numbers

Channeling much less mana into my voice than before, I say, "Do you guys still intend to fight us or did were prove a good enough point? Think fast."

Silence was my only response for a short time before the Asura commander with eight arms finally steps forward and says, "I have seen that your numbers are capable, but are you to be considered the leader and strongest among your people? What can you do?"

"Among the people of our alliance, yes," I reply shamelessly. "I am not only the strongest Traveler here but when I give an order they follow it. Ninety percent of the time. As for what I can do… do those undead not count?"

The other giant commander besides the behemoth bone fiend suddenly looks over at the Asura commander with sharply thin narrowed eyes. They for some reason did not seem to like how things were progressions. After seeing them look at the remaining numbers I was sure it had something to do with the preservation of troops.

"I want to see your Strength and resolve," the Asura commander replies fearlessly, walking forward with clenched fists. "Let us trade blows and know each other's warrior will."

Nodding my head slowly, I consider ways to survive this certain folly while saying, "By all means, take the initiative." Then, walking forward to meet the commander I unleash my Hulk form and spend several thousand MP growing chaos soul outer armor.

This time, though, instead of layered scales and plates I grew out two-inch thick crystalline bands that overlapped from my neck down to my feet before forming a large and round shell over my back like a Greek aspis shield. Next, I just covered my helmet and face with thick and smooth scales similar to a snake or lizard's.

A full thousand extra mana was spent growing out a long segmented crystalline tails bearing curved blades down the top and sides before my overall expenditure was rounded off to five thousand MP by growing out similarly curved blades in five rows from my shield shell.

Only a few seconds after the few seconds spent finalizing my transformation, the distance between the Asura commander and I had narrowed down to only a few yards and the near twenty-foot tall demon commander was swinging down at my body with two giant fists that were two thirds the size of my body.

I simply turned bodily into those fists and ate one to my shoulder, ribs, and head while my waist, back, and upper thigh were hammered down on at the same time. After having clenched my body and sank slightly at the knees to mitigate some of the momentum from those fists, most of the crystalline armor on those areas of my body began spider webbing with cracks and fractures while a few small pieces fell away from my face to reveal clenched and bared teeth.

My health bar appeared as I was nearly driven down into a kneel, losing surprisingly only a little less than thirty percent as my back knee threatened to buckle. However, I never lost strength or gave ground but instead simply ate the Asura commander's fists. Finally, they were forced to draw back with a speculating 'hm' sounds and prepare for my attack.

I did not keep them waiting for long, rushing forward with Quick Step up into the air at roughly their chest height before channeling Spirit Slash, Geist, and several thousand MP into my my clawed hand that I simply thrust forward.

The black crystalline swords coating my bladed fingers disregard that metallic black ivory armor worn by the commander, plunging straight through and into their sternum before unleashing a maelstrom of around ten Geists from each finger that raise and throw the commander into the air while a set of five piercing spiritual beams rip straight through their body.

Much more than thirty percent of the commander's HP was gone as they were sent into a half flip backward to land on their uppers arms and chest roughly some fifteen yards away from his original position. Since I only had a little more than five thousand HP, thirty percent was around fifteen hundred HP even with my maximized defenses. However, thirty percent of the demon boss's HP was a hell of a lot more than fifteen hundred.

"Are you satisfied?" I ask with forced nonchalance, trying to keep my voice steady while pouring more mana into my defenses for repairs. Just in case they were not satisfied.

Pushing themselves up to their feet while coughing up dark fluids despite the slow regeneration of their health, the demon Asura merely nods while retching before finally wiping the fluids from his divided face on his arm. "I'll acknowledge your spirit, young warrior," the commander says while standing up, albeit slightly unsteadily.

"Anybody else?" I ask while looking from one face to the next among the other commanders.

Some of them silently shook there heads while the other giant simply remained silent. The bone behemoth, though, stepped forward and said, "How do you intend to use our people?"

Ah, a conscientious fellow. For a chaos entity it was within expectations for them to care more about their forces than the demons did theirs. From my understanding, these entities were only a couple hundred years old and born from the environment or undead at the time while there were still many more demons in hell.

"Security," I reply simply and honestly. "Once we have settled our work down here and made the region safe again, we're hoping to build a city for Travelers like ourselves. You guys are going to be the army protecting our city from other Travelers. For now, though, we're going to divide your leaders for our own security purposes. Give me a moment."

Since I was using this private opportunity to forcibly delegate the familiars given to the others, I first need to figure out what to do with the multi-colored freak already on our side. Traytar was something I honestly would not have minded if it had been killed by my makeshift ultimate. So, if I could avoid it for as long as possible after changing its existential alignments and such then I would.

Deciding that Traytar would be best left with one of the figures I would probably have the lease future contact with, I point out the other giant demon besides the Asura who had been silent this entire time and say, "You, you'll be going with a fellow named Little Thirteen. Most people call him Mr. Thirteen."

The continued to remain silent but merely shrugged, taking up a more relaxed stance now that the question of its and its soldiers' continued existence was resolved.

Pointing to the Asura, I say, "You're going to be supporting another figure by the name of Donna and her clan. You can call her Ms. Donna. You two little guys will be paired up with our little guys, depending on how things go."

"The rest of our people?" The Asura asks plainly, crossing half of its arms low over its body while portraying a somewhat relaxed stance.

"Our people will each pick one from any type of demon among you and volunteers must come forward to accept their Blood Binding," I reply calmly. "The rest will be permanently stationed here with some of our other forces and players for the sake of our city establishment and protection. Well, one thousand of each type of entity under you. The others will be used to reward Travelers who climb the ladders of our organizations but you will still remain under the protection of our clans and city. Is this acceptable?"

In response to this, the Asura commander simply walks forward while pricking one of his fingers with his thumb in preparation for our Blood Binding. I quickly stop him with, "Wait. You have to bind with the others first. My blood will trigger an evolution of sorts. If they bind with you afterward, you'll turn them into a whole new race entirely. People usually have to pay for that service."

The Asura stopped while in the process of reaching out and created an awkward moment because of his eagerness. However, he recovered quickly as if trying to play off the fact and simply turned to walk away back to the other commanders. Nodding my head with a sad sigh, I open up my menus to my clan screen and say, "Don't leave just yet. We need to organize for efficiency."

After this, I 'asked' each of the commanders to once again take out one thousand of their troops to leave behind an average of one thousand demons of more than ten types. From these leftovers I asked for groups of three hundred, one hundred, one more hundred, another hundred, and then one hundred and fifty of every kind of demon available.

Since these numbers were literally of each kind of demon, my own clan brought in around three thousand overall demons! Duality, Thirteenth, and the crafting clan were all going to get a thousand demons to put in their clan stores for their clan members to work themselves to death trying to buy with contribution. The outer alliance clans would only be getting around seventy-five hundred demons to augment their numbers with.

I could imagine that everybody in these clans would literally sacrifice at least one of their current familiars to obtain a demon or chaos entity of any kind. I myself had already accumulated hundreds of spiritual chaos entities and now had hundreds more to play with. However, the general player base would generally have less than five- around three- familiars without certain achievement or class skills

My clans got an extra familiar slot just for ranking up from fodder, though I was not currently aware of how many elites we actually had. Elders, though, got great benefits while the leadership position came with the best. One day, we may have sub-leaders or other positions.

Left behind by these thousands of demons was much less than a thousand overall demons numbering in a few dozens or few hundreds of other demons in general. This surplus itself could serve a new purpose.

First, though, I had all three thousand demons belonging to Tragedy's Travelers come forth one by one or several at a time when available to simply place their hand or finger upon my clan store screen under the options for donating. One by one or a few at a time when available, they disappeared into the clan store's inventory.

This process alone took hours to pass, taking up the better part of a day. Hours beforehand the dead players had already come back to the battlefield. Now, though, their refreshed characters were in the same vanguard position as before but now the inner alliance players were all asleep behind the NPC skeletons.

When I finally finished gathering up my clan's demons, I gestured at the hundreds of leftovers and said, "These will be the new vanguard unit and that thousand over there will remain as your core troops. On the outside, the vanguard unit will be in charge of securing the plateau while the core troops maintain the ecosystems within it until we can finally establish our infrastructures and then the city around them. Currently, the vanguard will also be responsible for supporting our numbers within the manor wall under your commands. Have them prepare camp within three hundred yards of the manor and await your own signals for reinforcements when or if required."

Not even waiting for their replies, I turn away from the commanders waiting nearby off to the side with their reserves and point to the remaining few thousands of demons before simply waving them forward. Once they were in motion I then turned and started the long walk back to the other clans and skeleton NPC.

Doing this was mostly for the sake of the players, giving them time to wake up and prepared for Zekrom and my returning to our side of the battlefield with the 'spoils of war'. It took us more than fifteen minutes to march at my casual walking speeds to reach our vanguard lines, but once there I called our for all of our leadership figures to come up front.

Only a minute or two later, Donna, Mistress, Little Thirteen, and the other two clan leaders arrived with a handful of their clan members as well as my own party to help make up their presented numbers. When the essential people were finally together I informed them of the current gains and long term means.

For the other two clans, I presented them their 'halved' rewards of hundreds of demons to present to the vanguard for choosing familiars to Blood Bind. I did not however, tell them about using the clan storage and instead sent all of the outer players away to started cleaning up the battlefield and collecting 'loot'.

I was literally ordering them out on cleaning duties to pick up the actual tonnage of scraps parts of demonic and chaotic origin. If we had the actual manpower and ability to do so, I would have them vacuum and store the fluids themselves from the floor to at least convert into a carbon ingredient for steel.

As it was, I could only go through the process of presenting the other clans with their thousand demons. Once they were paired up and then stored away roughly an hour later, I had them go out to the opposite side of the battlefield where the ground was 'cleaner' for the same activities.

Cleaner, though, only meant there were mostly parts that had been blown far and wide with charred ground in between. There was really little to gain that I knew of in this unless some alchemy masters could make great formulas from it. I, on the other hand, had some ideas regarding it.

My party and I simply took our time relaxing while familiarizing ourselves with the stats and abilities of the different creatures in the clan store. Our pick and choose party lasted for the better part of an hour before my team had finally decided on their different or matching demons based on general needs. As well, a couple of us like Merch and Skooma and Conansson were forced to decide which of our mounts or familiars to sacrifice into XP.

Out of necessity.

Luckily, I not only had a potentially endgame number of familiar slots but also a giant honor guard and even my Acolyte slots. None of these demons, though, were worth turning into Acolytes for various reasons. I already had some people in mind for Acolytes, anyway.

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