Telekinesis was the ability to interfere with the movement of material systems through thought. In theory, whether matter in the macroscopic world or matter in the microscopic world, all of it could be affected by telekinesis.
Although air was invisible, it was undeniably matter. Roy could not yet manipulate the various molecules of air with telekinesis, but he could envelop the air within a certain area with telekinesis and then compress it. That was the principle behind an Air Shield.
With such a buffer layer, Roy gained many advantages in a melee. After all, he mainly fought in close combat now, so he naturally faced enemies head-on quite often. Even if an enemy's attack was delayed by just 0.1 seconds, it gave Roy more time to react.
As he killed enemies and swept away the scattered souls nearby, Roy fought while keeping an eye on Serlun.
Sure enough, Roy had guessed correctly. Having personally joined the slaughter this time, Serlun was extremely excited. A demon's bloodlust was displayed to the fullest in him. The constantly splashing blood all around turned his Demon Eyes a terrifying crimson, and even as he continuously killed enemies, he kept letting out frenzied roars.
A soul floated from the corpse of a Pegasus Knight he had killed nearby. Serlun Opened His Mouth and, with a whoosh, sucked the soul inside. The terror the Pegasus Knight had felt at death transformed into an incomparably exquisite flavor lingering in Serlun's mouth. He exhaled in satisfaction, then swung his scythes again to reap more lives.
Yes, just as Roy had guessed, Serlun was devouring souls from the battlefield while killing enemies. In fact, it was not merely a loophole in the Demon Contract that drove Serlun to do so. There was another reason: the High Demons Ignatius was about to summon in Demon City.
If he wanted to kill the Gold Dragon Queen, Serlun needed a High Demon Army to help him. But summoning High Demons came at a cost. The three of them had to give up a portion of the souls they obtained to those High Demons. Thus, Serlun felt that his expected gains had decreased, and he was trying every way he could to make up for it on the battlefield.
Serlun was actually beginning to regret agreeing to give Roy that ten percent share when they made their contract. At the time, he had believed the vast number of Low-Rank Demons would be enough to complete the mission, so he had thought giving up a little profit in exchange for an Elite Demon like Roy's service was worthwhile. Who would have thought that Ignatius and the others would arrive with news of the Gold Dragon Queen?
That meant Serlun had to divide an additional share of the soul profits compared with the other two Upper Demons, Riska and Ignatius. Of course he was unhappy about it.
Without a doubt, he now wanted to make up for his losses, and naturally, he intended to make them up through Roy's Demon Contract. So while fighting, he desperately devoured souls. Taking advantage of the battle not yet being over, he would grab every extra soul he could.
What he did not know was that Roy was not angered in the slightest as he watched him fight and devour souls. Instead, Roy was rather pleased.
Eat up, eat up. Let's see if you can still remember exactly how many souls you've swallowed while you're so busy grabbing benefits!
The number of Pegasus Knights was fixed. If they were wiped out, there should be one soul for every corpse. If Roy had been the only one collecting souls, Serlun would have been able to spot the discrepancy simply by counting afterward. But now Serlun was devouring them himself. Once the battle was over, the number of corpses would not match the number of souls, and Serlun might not notice.
Now Roy could seize souls without worry. He deliberately ran toward places where more souls had gathered. Every so often, he would pick a Pegasus Knight as an opponent, roaring and bellowing as though he were fighting with all his might. In reality, he was only doing it to collect the nearby souls.
After collecting more than forty souls in succession, the battle on the battlefield was nearing its end, and only then did Roy stop.
This Pegasus Knight unit had been almost completely slaughtered. Since they had not chosen to flee, the demons naturally showed them no mercy. More than two hundred Pegasus Knights had all been buried here in the end.
However, though they had all died in battle, they had also inflicted considerable losses upon Serlun's Demon Army. Pegasus Knights were considered mid-tier troops among the Elf Troops, and their combat power was fairly strong. In this attack, more than a hundred Little Demons from Serlun's Demon Army had been killed, along with over a dozen Hell Hounds.
But the greatest losses were to the Siege Weaponry. Of the ten catapults Serlun had brought, the Pegasus Knights had smashed half of them to pieces, and three ballistae had also been destroyed. After the battle, Serlun looked at the scattered parts of the ruined Siege Weaponry, and his anger kept rising.
He knew his march would probably be delayed...
After the Little Demons collected all the souls drifting across the battlefield and presented them to Serlun, he felt there seemed to be fewer than expected, but he did not pay much attention to it. Earlier, he truly had not counted how many souls he had swallowed.
Another reason was that he did not believe anyone would have the nerve to steal and devour souls that belonged to Serlun...
As an Upper Demon, Serlun was far too confident. How could he have known that not only did someone dare steal his souls, but the number stolen was not one or two, but more than forty?
Of the more than two hundred Pegasus Knights, only a little over one hundred and sixty souls ended up in Serlun's hands. Then Serlun had to give around sixteen souls to Roy as a reward. After all that, Roy had obtained more than fifty souls in total!
And this had merely been a small-scale combat. If the war became larger in scale, Roy estimated that he could obtain even more souls.
Accepting the sixteen souls Serlun handed over reluctantly, Roy pretended to greedily stuff them all into his mouth and devour them. In reality, he had stored them away first using the system's storage function.
After he had "eaten" them, Roy put on a satisfied expression and said to Serlun, "Thank you for your generosity, Lord Serlun! Your brutality and valor are a model for the Demon Race!"
Roy's flattery finally put Serlun in a better mood. He had never heard words like that from those Low-Rank Demons, so he laughed and said, "All right, I have a task for you now. As you saw, those damned Aveli Elves scouts destroyed our catapults. We must repair them. I will have the army temporarily camp here. Take some people and search the surrounding area. See if there is an Elf Race Lumber Mill. Get some timber back and repair these catapults!"
"Yes, Lord Serlun!" Roy dipped his head slightly to show that he had accepted the order. He backed away from Serlun a short distance before turning and leaving to gather manpower.
Serlun had always been impatient with trivial matters like repairing Siege Weaponry. In the past, he could only handle such chores himself, but now that he had an intelligent demon like Roy, Serlun naturally slacked off whenever he could.
Roy took Fat Tiger with him, along with a dozen or so Hell Hounds and more than twenty Little Demons, then left the camp to search for a Lumber Mill.
Serlun's laziness had given Roy an opportunity to act outside, and it should have been a perfect chance to escape. Yet Roy had no intention of doing that. The Demon Army had invaded the border of the Erathia Kingdom, and humans and their elf allies were already at war with them. If he ran now, what would happen if he encountered an army by accident? A lone demon facing a large number of enemies had only one possible fate.
Moreover, Roy needed a great deal of magic power to activate the summoning array in reverse and return. His most urgent task was to remain mixed in with the Demon Army and accumulate enough souls to strengthen his own magic power.
Although he did not intend to flee, leading a team out alone to search for a Lumber Mill was also an excellent opportunity for Roy.
A very good opportunity... to screw someone over.
Before you continue