Chapter 162: Buff to the troops

“I’LL SHOW YOU HOW I CAN MOTIVATE THEM,” she yells at me angrily as she rises from the chair.

“…?” She takes on a strange posture and suddenly lets out a roar that is absurdly loud and thunderous, seeming to make the entire area tremble.

The sound reverberates throughout the environment, completely covering the battlefield and affecting all the troops.

’I feel a bit weaker…’

[System Notification.

The beastman representative has just used [Hunting Territory]. The power of all allies has increased by 30% while the power of all enemies has decreased by 20%.

Secondary effect for beastmen [Bestial Berserker] – a variant of the berserker state activated by the hunting territory, granting a 40% strength buff while suppressing the lack of control effect to a certain degree.]

I look at the table where I see the enemies begin to advance, pushing my troops back, and the number of casualties has also increased, showing that this increase in strength was quite significant.

’She had a card up her sleeve.’ Unexpected, I didn’t think she would have an area-of-effect buff ability.

“W-Why are you smiling, you crazy woman?” She asks while looking at me.

“Smiling? Ah yes, it’s because I’ve just decided your fate, so be happy, it will be better than the first fate I had planned for you initially.”

“I liked your ability, so I’m going to make you a battle maid. Normally, you’ll work as a maid in my castle, and in wars, you’ll use your ability to help me.” I tell her, already planning how to use her.

A 30% buff for allies and a 20% debuff for enemies is impressive.

“As if I’d obey you, soldiers, it’s an order, advance right now!” She orders with a voice full of rage.

’So, she’s decided to command through fear.’ It’s not a bad choice, but it’s also not even close to the best option.

“I’m glad you can still entertain me, I thought you were going to cry and give up.” I say to her while searching for the best way to pressure her army.

’With the enemy buff and the debuff we received, they’ve ended up gaining a lot of advantages…’ My army started being pushed back, providing more space for the enemies to prepare, the worst part is the debuff that made a huge difference.

“I think I’ll have to steal your idea,” I say to Aokitsu as I get up from the table.

“…what?”

’I never thought I’d actually use this…’ a skill that the saint taught me. Since I have a lot of talent as a holy element user, she taught me a few things.

I kneel on the ground and join my hands in prayer, beginning to use the magic.

[Holy Prayer] – A holy element buff magic. By offering your faith to a goddess, you can create a buff area where all allies gain a 20% increase, as well as purifying negative effects. In exchange, a large portion of your mana will be extracted and sent to the goddess you prayed to, 40% of your mana will be extracted and 30% of that mana will be returned to the goddess.

’It’s quite costly, but I have my own way.’ Although this magic has a high cost, it’s very useful since it eliminates negative effects in general, meaning curses, miasma, and debuffs will be purified.

Soon, my entire body shines with a golden and silver light that quickly goes up to the sky, the magic acting to remove the debuff from my allies and apply a buff to them.

I get up and return to the table.

“Hahaha, it worked, who would have thought,” I murmur, laughing at the luck I had. To use this amazing magic, I spent only 10% of my mana.

The magic requires the condition of praying to a “goddess,” but the magic is not made by the goddess, it only needs faith, so it can be for any goddess, and fortunately, I am a goddess.

The 30% of the spent mana came back to me, after all, I prayed to myself.

“Tsk…” Aokitsu must have received a system message informing her that my allies are now fully healed and still buffed.

On the table, my soldiers stop being pressured. Although it worked, I hated using this magic, it’s strange and a bit ridiculous, even though it’s incredible. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a saint.

For a moment, we just watch everything, after all, you can’t give careless orders.

“Soldiers, activate [Blood Fang],” Aokitsu orders her soldiers with a certain coldness.

Soon, I see the soldiers on the table begin to form a strange formation.

’She’s drawing a magic circle using people… that was… ingenious.’ It seems I partially misjudged her.

She may not be good at leading, but she’s not as stupid as I thought. I had never thought of using living beings to form a magic circle.

“That is a…” I look closely at what appeared in the center of her formation.

’Fenrir, the mythical beast… but why that strange color?’ I’ve read in books that Fenrir, the mythical beast, is a special “monster” of S-class, but she just summoned a Fenrir on the battlefield as if it were normal.

But its color is not normal, it is completely red with various black markings on its body and even seems quite weak for an S-rank being, so it is clearly not an original Fenrir.

“Fenrir, activate [Bloody Sacrifice].” The Fenrir on the table begins to devour everything in its path, whether enemy or ally, it seems to be not distinguishing anything.

’She’s sacrificing her own soldiers…’

“How do you feel, Aokitsu?” I call her by name for the first time, recognizing her as an opponent. She finally understands what it means to have the coldness to sacrifice her troops.

This is a coldness that all good leaders must have, victory cannot always be achieved without sacrifice.

And she is now understanding this.

“…” Her gaze at me is the purest hatred, as I ’forced’ her to face the reality of making cold decisions.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’ll think you hate me. Remember, it was you who started this war, you should have been ready to sacrifice your troops.”

I notice that the Fenrir seems to be doing something with the blood it is obtaining from the dead.

“Why are you like this?” She asks, taking her eyes off the table.

“Like what?” I ask with real doubts, I’m not sure about the vision some have of me.

“Disgusting, you don’t even care about your troops dying, you’ve turned this war into a damn board game just for fun.”

“Disgusting is… and why am I disgusting? I don’t think I see a problem in me having fun with this.” She seems to get even more irritated when I say that, her hand tightening to the point where blood flows from the palm.

“THIS IS NOT A DAMN GAME FOR YOU TO HAVE FUN WITH, THIS IS REAL LIFE, THEY’RE ALL DYING AND FOR YOU IT’S JUST A DAMN GAME!” She yells at me with a voice full of venom.

“You’re right, for me this is all a game and the world is my playground, and I want to see who’s going to take that away from me,” I respond to her with coldness.

“I see this as a game because I can, you’re not a threat enough for me to see this as a war.”

“If you were a threat, I would take this seriously, do you think I’d be here playing soldier with you if I was really seeing this as a war?”

“I didn’t bring even half the troops I can, currently the army I brought doesn’t even reach 15% of what I can actually summon if I take this seriously.” I have an absurdly large army.

“Listen, girl, you may be over 700 years old, but that doesn’t mean you’re experienced enough to compete with me.”

“You don’t seem to be someone who understands the weight of the power you have, if you did, you would never have started this war. Tell me, what reason did you decide to wage war specifically with me?”

“Because we need to… we’re losing territory, my people are starving, we don’t live in as privileged an environment as you, and there’s still an abomination like you letting the monsters get even stronger,” she says with a certain sadness.

“Privileged? Hahaha, don’t make me laugh, you don’t even know the situation of my people to be saying such bullshit.”

My race has serious problems with everything, our territory is the most hostile in the world, all food is poisonous, water has miasma, and monsters live in all locations.

Demons kill each other for the bare minimum or become unpaid servants, because just the housing and food is enough for them.

Demons don’t live simply because they always wanted to, they’ve learned that they can only live simply because of the scarce environment, if they want to continue living, they must accept the bare minimum.

This can only be improved by having a good leader, but demons don’t accept just any leader, for demons a leader must not only have strength or intelligence.

The leader must have been chosen by the goddess, in other words, without a demon king, the situation of the demons is completely fucked.

Not to mention the fact that practically all races hate demons, and there’s also the extermination planned by humans.

“Aokitsu, before starting a war, you should have sought information, but it doesn’t matter, you won’t have a second chance.”

Soon, the Fenrir summoned by her troops stops after obtaining a gigantic amount of blood.

“Demon King, no matter if you don’t see me as a threat, I’ll show you that you should have taken this seriously,” Aokitsu says as she sees that Fenrir is ready.

“Fenrir, use [Crystallized Blood Ocean].” Soon, Fenrir explodes and the place where it was forms a magic circle that activates, causing a giant wave of blood to form.

The wave covers the entire battlefield, reaching here where we are defending with simple barriers.

The environment became dark as we are submerged in blood, but the darkness is not a problem, I can see perfectly.

I notice that on the board, everything has stopped.

’She crystallized the blood…’ Only her troops are moving to the surface of the crystallized blood.

“I won this, Demon King,” She says confidently.

“HAHAHAHAHA Good move, you made me laugh a lot today, but don’t sing victory so soon.”

“After all, I haven’t used the magic I chanted earlier.” She looks surprised and remembers that during my transmission I chanted an incantation.

“You know, Aokitsu, I thank you for defending my soldiers so glamorously. Did you know I made an extra guarantee for victory? After all, Plan A doesn’t always work, although they all have a protection that was given to them, they would still be hurt more, but now with this crystallized protection, the damage to them will be null.”

“I hope your troops can at least suffer a little before they die.” I activate the magic.

And soon a disturbing noise occurs while everything around begins to turn into salt in small amounts, making the ground now have a lot of salt. What I used was the magic [Return to Nothingness].

[Return to Nothingness] is a chaos element magic that changes the principle of existing matter, sending everything to nothingness and replacing it with salt.

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