Chapter 30: Demon Feast (1/2)
Much to Vainqueur’s satisfaction, when Icefang looked upon his magnificent hoard, the frost dragon’s eyes widened as if he had suffered from a stroke.
“So huge and deep!” Jolie walked on the hoard, amazed by its depth, its warmth, its texture... its shininess. As a kingly gesture, Vainqueur let his family touch his treasure, so they could feel his wealth.
“It’s so warm and golden!” Genialissime added. “It’s… it’s the biggest hoard I have ever seen!”
“Indeed!” Vainqueur boasted with a quiet, smug voice. “Can you feel the warmth? The richness? The perfect mesh of jewels, gold, and princesses?”
“How did you accumulate that much gold?” Icefang asked, ever resentful. “Your treasure could barely fill a cave one hundred years ago!”
“It is because I discovered a great, ancient secret,” Vainqueur kept boasting. “A system designed to make dragons even richer! By dragons, for dragons!”
“Twelve gods, please forgive me…” Manling Victor muttered to himself in a corner, while the dragons examined every inch of Vainqueur’s hoard, looking for a fake setup. “I tried. I’m so sorry...”
“An ancient secret?” Jolie turned to her uncle with stars in her eyes, and so did his small first cousins once removed.
“A great sorcery, if somewhat faulty.” Vainqueur decided not to mention the intelligence score errors nor his problems with the Emperor Class, before raising his index finger. “Which allows me to summon treasure by poking manlings to death!”
“This is gibberish,” Icefang contested, and even Genialissime seemed puzzled. “What next, the moon is not a planet, and death is not a birth defect?”
Vainqueur realized that too many revelations at once may be too much to stomach for his kind, and so reluctantly, kept the dark secret of dragon mortality to himself. The world was not ready yet. “It is the truth,” Vainqueur defended his greatest discovery. “By taking levels in the amazing Noble Class, I now earn a stipend of shiny gold every month!”
“What?!” All the dragons’ eyes turned at him.
“I knew I was right to take that insurance plan…” Manling Victor muttered. “Thank the gods I did.”
His dragon master ignored him and proudly showed his guests the iron plate around his neck, and began to boast eagerly, “I, Vainqueur, am the greatest adventurer in the world! The manlings worship the ground I walk on when I do not fly! They pay me to kill their kind, and so do their gods!”
“This plate made you rich?” Icefang looked at it with greed.
“Oh, look, princesses!” Jolie noticed the trapped maidens in the fairy crystals, suddenly more interested in them than the secret of gold farming. “Two elves, so beautiful… and a human. Uncle Vainqueur, that one is not ethical.”
“They are stuffed!” Icefang complained. “They cannot dance nor sing! It is indragon!”
“Yes, feel jealous of my wealth and treasures,” Vainqueur taunted his rival. He opened his mouth to gloat further when his castle trembled, and a shrieking sound erupted.
“The magical alarm,” Manling Victor said, panicked. “Maure!”
“No, that is my vault’s alarm!” Vainqueur glanced and smelled around, looking for an uninvited guest, and found none. He immediately glared at Icefang. “A thief! A thief in my hoard!”
“Vainqueur, I respect myself too much to steal your gold on your own Bragging Day,” Icefang sneered back. “And silver is better, purer.”
“No, it is not,” Vainqueur replied to that heretic.
“Mayhaps this caused the sound?” Genialissime asked, pointing a claw at the second set of doors in the vault. Vainqueur squinted at them.
Indeed, the gate to Hell did shine strangely.
At once, without much warning, the chains holding the doorway closed broke. As the gates opened, a burst of sulfuric smoke entered the vault, alongside dozens of imps, fiends, and bug-like monsters. All of them carried weapons and wore armor, walking as an ordered regiment on Vainqueur’s hoard.
“The seals broke?” Manling Victor raised his scythe. “But Choc and the others reinforced them! Unless…”
“Vainqueur, your illegal occupation of King Maure’s property ends here!” A huge, tasty fiend that looked like a mix between a cow, a bat, and a humanoid stepped through the gates. “We, Maure Hellcorporated, shall take back our market share!”
The sight of these paupers desecrating his treasure room briefly paralyzed Vainqueur with fury, before he understood the situation. “Ah, good thinking, Manling Victor,” the dragon told his confused chief of staff. “Excellent idea to bring appetizers for the early guests.”
“Is that the buffet?” Genialissime said with a cheerful expression, humming at the sulfuric smell. “Nice, they smell spicy.”
The fiendish leader suddenly realized that he faced seven hungry dragons of various sizes, and his troops took a step back.
“I thought you, Vainqueur, would be stingy on the food, but I am pleasantly surprised,” Icefang said, glimpsing at the humanoid cattle with hunger. “He’s a bit skinny around the edges, but it will make for a passable snack.”
“A talking cow?” Jolie looked at the fiendish captain with interested eyes. “A new kind of cattle? It’s grey enough not to count for my regime! Dibs on the cattle!”
The fiend’s eyes widened in panic. “Retreat!” the cattle shouted to its troops. “It’s a trap! IT’S A TRAP!”
The gold coins below the fiend moved on their own, taking the shape of a manling-like creature, which immediately restrained it from behind. Vainqueur knew he was right to give his hoard self-defense classes.
And then...
Chomp!
Jolie swallowed the cattle fiend whole, and the other adult dragons rushed for the gate with hunger. The fiends tried to run away back to Hell through the gate, only for them to get frozen by Icefang’s chilling breath or stopped by the hoard as Genialissime closed in.
And so the feast began.
Vainqueur watched with quiet joy as he saw his niece and cousins catch the food and devour it with ravenous energy. Genialissime’s children, too young to hunt alone, worked together to bite a screaming demon’s legs and drag him to a corner; even his bitter rival enjoyed the appetizer, showing classy table manners by snapping fiends in half before eating them like sticks.
“Holy Hell…” Victor stared at the scene, horrified, putting a hand on his mouth. “It’s… it’s… savage...”