"My Liege! My Liege!" A hurried demon servant came crashing into King Baal's bathing room, where he noticed that he had interrupted his majesty's pleasure time.
The demon maids screeched a little and hid behind King Baal's legs, chest, and one even flew above his head. However, the King of Demons grabbed her as she attempted to glide over his head.
"My lord! Please forgive me for my rude-" The maid realised her mistake a little too late, and before she could finish her sentence, her life was squashed out of her chest. And all that remained was a container of broken bones, organs and blood hanging over King Baal's hand. As if the demon maid's pitiful demise wasn't enough to satisfy the King, he brought it near his face and sniffed it before taking a bite out of her thigh.
"Hmm, not too bad. What is it you want, puny Imp?" Even though King Baal had a human face, there was always a split second where the Imp servant could see the facial silhouettes of an old frog or a grumpy cat appearing like a sort of transition, as if King Baal himself had two other souls residing within him. The servant hesitantly wiped his sweat away as understandably the sound of his Baal munching on demon meat was rather overbearing.
But in order to avoid letting King Baal lose his patience again, the imp servant swallowed his saliva and announced the news he bore. "The traitorous Minotaur Lord Moloch has brought his shield down one day before the deadline! Our troops, ever ready, are in the process of organising themselves to follow your command." The imp servant did not speak a full lie, but a half truth was still a lie.
The troops were indeed amassed for the fight, but their commanders had allowed them to take one final break. Even King Baal had assumed that the traitor would try to avoid his fate until the very last second and had hence decided to relax for the day. Clearly not even he expected the Demon Minotaur Lord to choose to bring his shield down early. But then again only a few had expected him to turn into a traitor.
"So you're telling me they are not ready for battle?" King Baal's left eyebrow raised at his imp servant's phrasing. He had been around all types of demons, so he understood them better than anyone and knew than someone tried to twist their words.
"They are! They are!" The lowly Imp outright lied hoping to not join the demon maid in King Baal's belly, but a snort came from his liege as he stood up. At roughly 5 metres tall, his stature might be lean and slender, but that did not mean the aura he radiated was not death defying.
The imp servant continued to lie prostrated and prayed to the netherworld that he would still be there in the next minute or so. (Even though he would get resurrected just like the maid.)
"What are you waiting for? Don't you know what to do next without me telling you?!" King Baal questioned, and the imp servant shook his head violently. Without a moment of hesitation, he ran off to quickly inform the other imp servants and demon maids to prepare the King's armour while he would send a messenger to get the generals to meet with him immediately.
But before the Imp servant was done telling the others what to do, King Baal came out of the bathroom and shouted his first command. "Send the first wave in! Let's see what made the cow toy dare to defy us." The Imps simultaneously acknowledged his orders as they continued to hurry in preparation for the start of the battle.
After all, it would be a shame that the Demon Army did not strike any fear in the hearts of any would-be traitors of the King.
--------------
As the 'newbie' shield came down, there was a slight disturbance within the air. It made everyone tense up for the next few moments. Yet the first minute since the birth of Pandapolis passed without any incident, causing the demons under Lord Moloch to smirk. "Seems like our lord's strategy worked." Sebastia who had returned from the Farming World for the fight was clearly happy about her chosen lord's plan.
Lord Moloch knew that every demon would be given a break before the big battle so they would be in an ideal condition for the first strike. King Baal hardly changed his strategy, always utilising the old plans without fail, but then again, they always worked.
Considering it had been ages since the last traitor, it would be strange if anything had changed. Thus Moloch had gambled on this. In any case, the worst case scenario would have been that the Demon Army teleported into the area immediately after the shield dissipated, which was what they had been preparing for till date. (Although some bet to differ that the worst case scenario was the Demon Army not coming at all. This would definitely throw a blow to Jin's time sensitive event, and the dungeon supplier was clearing not prepared for such a scenario.)
But seeing that nothing of that sort happened, Lord Moloch and his minions knew that following the tradition, the first wave of the army would be hastily organised for the imminent attack. True, the first wave might still be formidable, but it at least meant that they would not be in full strength due to their disorganisation, giving the defenders a slight edge.
Right now, it felt like a game of tower defence where reducing the number of attackers meant everything.
At the same time, the cultivator's crowd continued to gather around the shop instance and waited for the official start of the event. Usually, Jin would appear to give some nonsensical speech, but this time around, an informative video was brought up in all the auditoriums, allowing everyone to have a basic level of preparation.
Depending on how well Moloch's plan worked, they could even take a moment to decide on which front they wanted to be assigned. (Though they did not know was that ultimately, their placement was down to the strategists and tacticians in the dungeon world's war room.) Even in case the plan failed, the first phase of defensive countermeasures did not concern the cultivators.
Separately, Xiong Da and the rest of the Pandawans had been given a specially coded message from their app, asking them to step into the conference room instance. Trusting in Boss Jin they did just that, only to find Bear Cub One waving at them intensely.
"Boss Jin is busy handling the last few adjustments of the raid, but the server has already started up. What we want from you is to act akin to the cultivators' 'special forces'." Bear Cub One explained as he passed them the very same USB chip which Xiong Da and others had used previously for the Squads testing.
"Does that mean we will all be able to officially use the squads' function?" Xiong Da asked with excitement, and Bear Cub One inadvertently shook his head.
"We still need more testing. This time around, we have limited it to all the Pandawans." The little bear announcer replied which made people like Yue Wen, the Healing Maiden Cultivator and Se Lang, the Wacky Wolf Cultivator have blank faces and question marks floating above their heads.
"Don't worry, we will fill you in. It's going to be lots of fun!" Luo Bo smiled as she felt excited to use the Squad functions again.
"Unfortunately, there were a few drastic changes to the squads due to the limitation of the server. All the changes are recorded in the USB drive, and a notice will be uploaded to your screen the moment you plug it in. Please read it carefully and use this place to get some practice using the new squad function. We will send you out when it is appropriate." Bear Cub One assured them that they would definitely receive more points than the cultivators who rushed in first. And if they were to rush first, it was mainly the decision of the 'server's' algorithm.
"But do we even have the place to practice the squad function in this small cramp place?" Ruo Ying, the Esthetic Egret Cultivator, asked, and the Bear Cub One roared cutely in response, causing the conference room to widen in size.
Without further ado, some of the Pandawans started to insert the USB drive into their phones and read the notes in amazement.
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