***The Infernal Planes of Gluttony***

***Amon***

Our operation truly began two days before the end of Lord Ostreios' competition. I had asked my minions about it, since I had never seen the city's Lord nor heard much about his exploits, and two days was the minimum time frame it would take him to react as long as we didn't go overboard, or so my people told me.

It wasn't like my minions knew the Demon Lord personally, but they had lived in Baaar for long enough to judge which things would cause a public reaction from their leaders.

Kitia had some stories to share of cases when other megalomaniac demons tried to mess with the Lord's competition, and in most cases, Ostreios truly didn't care. His little game was after all intended to find those who would thrive in a battlefield environment without rules and to recruit them once they had proven themselves. Having someone try to cheat during the competition was almost a given and therefore expected.

The only time he had intervened himself was when a group of raiders brought an entire army to join the fun of harvesting souls without the intention to pay fealty afterwards.

So we kicked off our operation slowly, as to not betray its scale.

Seven groups of imps who were stupid enough to swear an oath of loyalty on our cause left the camp in the disguise of regular 'equipment-retrievers'. After all, lesser demons who only gathered items for their former owners were largely left alone on the battlefield. Yet, the true intention of our people was to plant traps and poisonous gas-canisters wherever they could.

It was then when we saw the first results of our labour as the souls began to roll in. Just a few at first, since the Infernum apparently saw it fit to distribute them among everyone who was involved in a trap's kill. And imp here, and an imp there could proclaim that they had gotten something.

Even I received a random soul. I was at first a little baffled by this unexpectedly fortunate development, since I hadn't expected to gain something until I pulled the trigger myself. Up until Uphir corrected my false assumption that getting souls only had something to do with someone's involvement.

The Infernum had some special rules regarding the distribution of souls when it came to warbands. And as it stood, our group had apparently been together for long enough to be recognized as such. This meant that the souls for any kill during a large-scale combat action would be distributed among the whole group according to some rules which he didn’t know the exact details of. As an imp, he had never been in a position that would allow him to make use of such knowledge.

So my assumption was kind of right, and yet wrong.

As the competition neared its final day, our operation ramped up in scale and we quickly burned through the first half of our stockpiled explosives.

I was sitting on my rock when we hit our first big target.

Without being able to tell who had stepped onto one of the landmines, the whole camp knew immediately that we had gotten a big one as everyone received more than a dozen souls at once!

The new additions pushed me over the threshold of what my current body could store, which made my whole body seize up and I felt myself change as I underwent the familiar agony of metamorphosis as my body and mind adjusted their structure. I hissed as I held onto my consciousness, too afraid of losing it in a vulnerable position among my less than trustworthy minions.

Then it was all over.

I was sitting on a rock that was now much too small for me and had a humanoid body with wings, a tail, and horns. As I studied myself, I acknowledged that my proportions now seemed right for a teenaged human. I would have explored my new physique further if I hadn’t noticed that the whole camp was in an uproar.

The boost which we had received was massive, and it hadn’t pushed just me over the edge.

Aside from myself, my four most trusted and at least half of those who remained inside the camp had undergone a metamorphosis as well. Many lay on the ground, still trying to overcome the paralysis of their evolution. I wouldn’t have recognized my leading group in their new bodies, but their mana signature remained the same.

Shax still retained his imp-like physique, but he had swollen up in size to almost twice my height. Two wings had sprouted from his back which made him look like an oversized version of my own imp-evolution. He had become a massive war-demon with a spiked tail and claws that could rip someone apart with ease.

Kitia looked almost like a human, but her skin had turned ghostly white and two blue, curved horns emerged from her forehead. Her fingernails were blue claws and her ears had elongated. As a whole, her new body gave her a cold and terrible beauty.

Uphir had turned into a lean creature that reminded me of Sozzudon, but was altogether different. His feet had the makeup of a stag’s with their knees bent in the wrong direction. Four burning horns crowned his head and most of his body was covered in plate-like bones.

Philomena had also grown to an impressive size. But while she towered above Kitia and Uphir, she didn’t reach Shax’s height. Four wings and two horned tails adorned her back, and while her new form retained some womanly allure, the toned muscles and abs on her body would tell any opponent to avoid a physical contest.

All four of them were still down for the count.

Having so many of our leadership group out of commission at the same time caused quite a panic under those who didn’t achieve an evolutionary breakthrough and quite a few looked torn between bolting or attacking while their more powerful competition was still undergoing the transformation.

I raised my voice, “Everyone, hold! Imps, prepare the supplies! This hasn’t come unexpectedly, so remain calm and proceed as planned. All that has changed is that our timetable has moved forward.” Which was quite the understatement. We hadn’t expected to hit one of the more powerful demons until the final stage of our operation.

Kitia groaned and sat up. “That was a powerful one! At least fourty or fifty souls if my guess is right. I never got that many in one go.”

“We have about sixty people in our inner group, which means that the one who we took out had something around twenty-five-thousand souls banked up,” Uphir pointed out and got to his feet. He stumbled around for three steps before he got used to his new body. “This is bad. It must have been some commander who was on his way back into the fray. Have our mine-layers gotten close to the battle's centre?”

“More like a whole group of several powerful individuals. I can’t believe that someone seriously powerful wouldn’t have enough subordinates to scout his path and avoid our traps.” Kitia looked down at herself, then up at Philomena who was already standing and looking around with wonder in her eyes. The pale demoness was clearly comparing bodies before she suddenly squeezed her impressive rack and jiggled them around. “Why by the Infernum do I get the useless flesh-lumbs and you get to be all tall and powerful!?” She swished her blue-scaled tail as she growled at the larger demoness.

Philomena looked down on the smaller demon who was complaining about fate and smiled. “That’s what you get for mainly catering towards wizards and such. Their weak physique is quite clearly reflected in your evolution.”

“Hah! I bet you can’t do this!” Kitia raised her hand and blasted Philomena with a ray of blue energy that looked like raw mana. The larger demoness cursed and fell over, but immediately sprang back up.

She would have retaliated for sure if it hadn’t been for Uphir’s roar. “Stop comparing your horns! We just fucked with someone powerful and we need to prepare.” His eyes wandered between the two jiggling assets and the flexing abs of the two femme fatales. “Which means that we need equipment! Cover yourselves.”

I silently congratulated him on avoiding telling the two females to put on some armour. As a demonling or imp, I hadn’t cared much for the female form. Only the succubus had caused a reaction, but I attributed this solely to her trait as a sex-vampire. This new form of mine though, it clearly found Kitia’s bounciness attractive.

Cursing, I pulled leather pants from my bag of holding and put them on before I embarrassed myself. Luckily, I had ordered my people to collect some equipment for exactly such a case.

Shax was relatively unimpressed by our antics. Instead, he just stood there, flexing his muscles and admiring his new body.

“Shax, are you ready to give the signal?” I asked, returning him to reality.

He nodded and joined the others in their attempts to find something suitable that wouldn’t make them look like nudists on a battlefield.

Then we spent ten agonizing minutes trying to attire ourselves until be looked more or less like a rag-tag warband.

From afar.

The other amended, and seeing us ready to set out, I had no other choice but to admit that he was right… that I was right… damn it! I had no time for self-introspection!

I huffed and made sure that I had my bag of holding, and that all of our supplies were stored away in other spacial items which were distributed among the whole group. This would make it so that if we lost someone on the way, the plan wouldn’t fail immediately.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked and received a series of determined nods. There wasn’t any need to discuss our plan again. We already spent days lamenting over the details of how we would get the most souls out of this.

So we set out, running or flying low to the ground, whatever mode of locomotion was best suited to the individual.

Lord Ostreios’ competition was set up like a game of ‘King of the Hill’, with the weaker competitors at the edge of the battlefield, and the further you got up the mountain outside Baaar, the stronger your opponents got. The spot which would get someone the most fame was on the mountain’s peak, where the Lode Stone was located.

That was where we were headed.

While our goal would be seen as unachievable to the random observer, simply reaching it was – while unlikely – not completely out of the question.

What looked like a chaotic battlefield from above was actually a somewhat orderly affair. Over the course of the competition, warbands who wanted to impress the Demon Lord would attempt to climb the mountain, often bypassing other parties in order to claim the spot they desired. They would then give their best to simply hold their position until the competition was over.

A stronger warband wouldn’t bother to waste their strength by fighting every weaker group on their way to the top. In turn, weaker groups would avoid getting themselves obliterated by a stronger foe who wasn’t even interested in claiming their spot.

In other words, over the course of the competition, a certain hierarchy was formed.

That was what allowed us to charge onto the battlefield mostly unmolested as long as we didn’t show interest in challenging any of the other groups. At first at least. The higher we got, the likelier it would be that someone took offence to our presence and challenge us in order to expel the weaker force who had no business so close to the top.

But again, a proper battle wasn’t what we were interested in. In fact, challenging even one of the weaker groups on the fringes of the battlefield would have been a quick way for us to die. We had no chance of competing with someone who had centuries of experience, given our newly formed bodies.

We actually traversed the first five kilometres without any hindrance. Most groups just looked at us curiously from afar and we simply circumvented two larger battles by holding respectful distance to the two warring parties.

The first problem arose when we reached the foot of the mountain and had the misfortune of stepping right into what was apparently the claimed area of some other group. About thirty demons of various forms and sizes shouted, then charged at us.

I gave the order to react as discussed and instead of fighting, my people dropped poison gas canisters and mines behind us as we ran on. What was formerly a pretty relaxed trot for a demon turned into a frantic sprint as we ran for our lives, solely relying on the fact that the gas would shield us from pursuit.

Our strategy had the desired effect and I felt the rush of power as we even got a few souls out of it. The warband that was in pursuit lost interest quickly as we left their claimed area. They had realized that we didn’t want to claim their spot.

In fact, we didn’t want to claim any spot. We were a suicide brigade that had no other goal but to carry our stockpiles of explosives and poison into the competition’s heartlands where the various groups were more densely packed and where every kill would gain us an ever-larger amount of souls.

Climbing the mountain turned into a challenging game of cat and mouse as we tried to advance with the greatest speed possible.

“That last one was a close call,” Uphir commented after we had a run-in with another group that had cost us eight imps and one of the spacial bags. “It might be time for our distraction, and we should stop holding back.”

I considered this and judged that losing more of our supplies was worse than using them too early and getting nothing out of it. He was likely right that this was as far as we'd get without the skills to defeat our enemies. We were also pretty close to the competition’s heartlands. What we encountered so far were unorganized groups who had already lost the competition and only continued fighting to get some souls. From now on, our opponents would be very likely to have ranged skills or the ability to close with us before we could do anything about it.

In fact, the last warband that had cost us a part of our supplies did so because they had several skilled archers who picked off our stragglers.

“You are right. This is as far as we can go without using our stuff too much.” I turned and gave the signal.

Those among us who had wings took to the skies, relying on some spell to defy physics. Sadly, I had already confirmed that all I could do in my new form was to flap my wings around without effect. My mass had turned too large in comparison to the size of my wings and I hadn’t yet learned a spell that would allow me to fly by reducing my weight. The knowledge was there in the back of my mind, but due to our operation I hadn’t yet the time come up with a solution.

Shax’s and Philomena’s evolutions, on the other hand, had the proper design by nature, and they took to it like fish to swimming in water. They soared to the skies without a problem and dropped gas canisters to our left and to our right, preparing a safe corridor for the rest of us!

***The Infernal Planes of Gluttony***

***The King of the Hill***

Lord Ostreios was pleased as he watched the ongoing selections. There were quite a few groups who had clearly risen above the rest of the rabble and drawn his interest. He would recruit them for certain into his legion.

And then they could go and raid one of the other Infernal Planes for great cuisine. He patted his considerable belly at the thought. Maybe a visit to Envy's wine gardens? Or to raid Sloth's ever lush fields?

The great Demon Lord of Baaar shed a tear at the thought of tasting some Infernal food other than demonling. Though, he had taken a liking to the new dried and salted demonling tail-sticks that had become so popular recently.

He offered his aide one. “Want some?”

The smaller demon, who was still impressive when compared most of the lesser warriors out there, shook his head. “No, thank you, my Lord.”

Ostreios shrugged and bit half the stick off with a crunch. “Are there any other groups I should know about?”

“Ah, well.” The aide thought for a moment of what to tell his Lord. These competitions were pretty boring year after year with only the rare exception. Then his face lit up as he remembered something. “The spies finally found out what the imps who were camping outside Baaar are up to. They are trying to cheat.”

The Lord rolled his eyes. “Do tell… how surprising!”

His aide shed a drop of sweat at his liege's sarcasm, afraid that he had bored his superior. “Ah, but the interesting thing is that they took out Ferachses and half his group when one of them stepped out to take a dump. That alone pushed half the camp of imps over the threshold for their metamorphosis.”

Ostreios frowned as he searched his memories, then remembered that Ferachses’ warband had risen quite quickly through the ranks, first by taking quests through Baaar and then by aiding Ostreios directly. They were a bunch of powerful, but stupid brutes. Just the right group to use as cannon-fodder in a battle between legions since they could take a beating and remain standing for quite a while.

To be taken out by an imp-forged trap was embarrassing, to say the least. “Ha! What did those idiots do? Did they fail to ward their position?”

“Not quite,” the aide assured his liege. “They did everything according to the book, but the imps used quite potent explosives paired with a powerful poison. It was a lucky hit I would say, since it took out Ferachses’ only healer in the initial blow and then the rest of the group succumbed to the poison.”

“I told him that he should find himself a few more mages.” Ostreios shook his head. “Having a warband with only warriors allows too many openings.”

“You might be interested to know that the ‘cheaters’ packed up their things and are now moving rapidly towards the Lode Stone,” his aide informed him. “Half of them got an evolution out of it and they are now masking as a genuine warband! We should stop them to prevent further interruptions. It is clear that they are trying to cheat some souls away from more powerful demons.”

Ostreios snorted at that. “Why? Leave them be. On a real battlefield, they would stand no chance. The enemy commander wouldn’t allow them to move that deep between his ranks. On the same account, you said yourself that they were mere imps just hours ago? Anyone who allows himself to get slain by some newly ascended demons isn’t worth his position in my legion. This may be a good test for those who secured themselves a spot in my inner ranks.”

He nodded to himself. “Do not aid them, but don’t stop them either, and don't tell anyone about them. I want to see what makes them so confident that they are charging right into the core of my competition. And make sure to withdraw any invitations to those who are stupid enough to get themselves killed by some unconventional warfare. I don't want such people in my legion.”

The aide bowed, too afraid to question his liege’s decisions.