Desire and I leave the cave and walk back to Felfire Town, it takes us three hours but we make it unscathed, unless I count Desire's little attempts at getting a reaction out of me about me owning her now. We arrive and the demons there spot us and start bowing to me.

"Master," they say as I walk past. I'm never going to get used to that.

That harpy from before flies over and lands in front of us. "Master, welcome home," she tells me and bows.

"Right..." I mutter and furrow my brow. "So where is Jidaan's old place, I might as well stay there for now while I get used to all this," I ask her and she gets back up.

"Very well, Master. Follow me," she replies and starts walking off after folding up her wings to her sides.

Desire and I follow behind her as more and more demons bow down to me. It was no less than a week ago they gave me odd looks when I first wandered in, and now I not only own this place but them as well? Demons are fucking weird... Well I certainly ain't going to treat them like slaves, my mother raised me better than that.

We pass by the Ifrit's Armpit pub and continue down the main street where we arrive at a large manor sized building. "This was Jidaan's home, as it was the only place big enough for him to fit, now it is yours," the harpy tells me.

"Why are you so accepting of all this? I killed your master and two of your friends," I ask the harpy.

She stops and looks at me. "We all hated Jidaan for what he did to us while he was in charge, hoarding decans to himself and stuffing his face with most of the town's food, he was starving us and using us as his personal toys or entertainment... Yes, two of my friends are gone and I can't blame you for fighting back as I would have done the same, but you freed us and the town from his cruelty... Unless you plan on continuing where he left off," she replies.

"No, I'm not going to force anyone to do anything they don't want, that's not how I was raised. And besides, I've got my own task I need to focus on," I tell her and push open the large thick doors to the manor, if a large rusty metal shed looking building can be called that.

I look around and see four doors in this room along with what appears to be trophy cabinets. The harpy shakes herself out of her stupor and walks beside me. "To the left is the treasury where Jidaan kept all his decans and other valuables. The second door leads to his bedchamber, the third door leads to his personal kitchen and the last door is where he keeps his... toys," she tells me and I glare at the fourth door.

I walk over to it and open the door to see twenty demons both male and female of different kinds, mostly harpies, incuponies and succuponies chained up to the walls with bowls of blood apples and what appears to be cups of brown liquid. They all look miserable and look over to us.

"Here we go again..." a demon who looks like a succupony but with dirty yellow hair and matted blue fur says already resigning to her fate.

I look back to the harpy beside me. "What's your name?" I ask her.

"Geneine," she replies.

"Okay, Geneine. I want you to release all of these demons and give them a hundred decans each... is that a lot or a small amount?" I order her and then ask.

"It's a decent amount, and are you sure you want to release them? They are yours after all," she replies and asks.

"I don't want slaves or servants. I want others to look up to me and follow me out of loyalty and their own free will. A follower who's willing to follow me is better than those that follow because they have no choice. I want to earn their loyalty and trust instead of fear and hate," I tell her getting a wide eyed shocked expression from her and I start ripping off the rusty chains binding the demons here.

After we've released them all, I've allowed them to stay here as long as they want or until they're ready to leave. Geneine then takes me to my new room and I notice the bed is large but stinks like shit.

"Well first I want the bed removed and a new clean one put in, do what you want with the old one," I tell Geneine. In a large wardrobe is multiple pairs of loincloths and I grimace at the equally bad smell in there. "Get rid of these as well, burn them if you have to," I then say and close the wardrobe.

"Very well, Master. Anything else?" Geneine asks.

"No thank you, I'll just look around and see what we got here, and just call me Damien please," I reply and she leaves the room after nodding.

"So, mister demonlord. What do you plan to do with your new town and demons?" Desire asks me and hugs me from behind.

"If I want to leave Tartarus, I need to kill Val'hades first, and for that I'll need to build an army of my own... So I think we'll be here for a few years as we build up our forces," I reply and enter the treasury. Looks like Jidaan wasn't exactly swimming in money but there seems to be quite a bit here.

"Our forces?" she asks confused.

"Yes ours, I don't know anything about this place or the demons and their politics, traditions, or anything. I want you to help me understand everything I can about this place," I reply picking up a crude looking coin which appears to be a just a piece of blank dark purple metal that I have no idea what it is.

"Looks rather plain for a coin..." I comment getting Desire to look at me.

"Each coin is made from demonite, a metal only found in the Smog Mountains near the Overlord’s Castle where it grows and each coin weighs exactly ten grams," she replies as she puts on a ring with a small red gem on it.

"Metal... that grows?" I ask her with an unbelieving look.

"Of course, demonite grows due to the high concentration of demonic energy in the mountain. It gathers into clusters and solidifies into this metal," she explains.

"Right, well then. Let's take inventory of what we got and who we got," I say and head out the door.

---

---

The last two months have been stressful and I'm about to blow a fuse at this rate, I've had to use Desire to read out anything in the demonic written language for me while slowly teaching me it as well, she's teased me daily about it. I've given away half of the treasury to the population to help circulate what currency we have and to lower the prices of goods in town, so far it's working well and the demons are starting to like me more despite finding out I'm a demonlord and not a deamon like they first thought. My plan to have them loyal to me for my actions rather than through fear and force is starting to pay off.

Desire has had her blood apple tree grove moved over to a nice flat area of land just outside of town and it is being tended to by the lesser demon fel ents. They're basically tree people who look like they've been burnt like charcoal. They keep the trees healthy and pick the fruit when it’s ready to sell to the town, we get the profits and I pay them ten decans a day. They’re very happy with the arrangement.

Speaking of decans, Desire, Geneine, and I have counted what's left in the treasury and I have fifty-thousand and eight-hundred decans, should be enough to get this town running like a well oiled machine I hope.

I've also been told there is a large deposit of hell iron ore nearby but the cave that it's in has been overrun by wild monsters. I'll have to learn how to use my powers as I've been unable to re-summon that scythe again, so the mine is on hold for now.

The demons who were Jidaan's sex slaves decided to stay and be my personal servants. I told them it wasn't necessary but they said they had nowhere to go and that they were chained here for years. I relented and now they're my manor's maids and butlers, paid of course. Three of them are surprisingly good cooks.

Desire has informed me that the town's underground water supply is running low due to a blockage in the channel and that some imps and goblins have been sent to fix it. While I've learnt that demons don't need to drink water, it's used more for bathing, washing clothes and used in alchemy. They came back later and informed me the blockage was due to a infestation of waste worms, they've been dealt with and the water is flowing again.

During these last two months Desire has been sneaking into my room and getting into my new bed with me, something about feeling secure and that I'm just so nice to be around. That and I think she's trying to get into my pants any way she can.

---

I wake up to the sound of my door opening where Geneine walks in. She's at least now wearing a shoulderless shirt to cover her chest and a cleaner loincloth, she’s even putting on a bit more weight and doesn’t look skinny anymore, and her fur and feathers are now clean after a good wash.

"Good morning, Damien," she greets me and I try to get up, only to find I'm pinned down to the bed by Desire who’s snuggled up against me with a happy smile.

"Again? Argh, I give up..." I sigh in defeat, she wants to sleep here then fine, I don't care anymore.

"I have some bad news from the harpy patrol, there's a large group of armed lesser demons who've heard that Jidaan has been slain and are heading over here right now, most likely to raid us," she tells me.

"Oh wonderful, just what I need right now..." I grumble and manage to slip out of Desire's vice like grip, she's been getting stronger and stronger the more she feeds off me which I've limited to just kisses and hugs, but I don’t know how long she’ll be able to hold herself back before she decides she wants more.

"What defences do we have?" I ask Geneine.

"Jidaan was the only deamon here and is the main reason why the other towns left us alone, but we have over fifty imps, thirty harpies, forty-three goblins, a hundred felhounds, sixteen boarus, seventeen fel ents, twenty-one incuponies and thirty-seven succuponies," she tells me.

"Sounds like a decent amount. What of weapons or demon abilities?" I ask her.

"Most of our weapons are rusted over from poor maintenance and that we can't get any more ore from the mine. We have mostly knifes, swords, spears, and some maces. As for abilities, the imps can throw fireballs, the incuponies and succuponies are agile and good with whips and can drain their target’s energy until they're too weak to fight but that takes a while. We harpies have the air advantage, the boarus has a tough hide and can take a nasty beating while healing at a fast rate, the felhounds have a nasty bite that burns quite badly and the goblins are good at team tactics when fighting together due to their quick thinking," she explains. "But most importantly we have you, Damien," she says like I’m the ace in the hole… I don’t even remember how I did most of the stuff I did against Jidaan...

"Right, well then, gather every demon willing to fight and arm them as best you can, get the boarus up front with shields and armour with an imp on their shoulders to both attack and protect them. Do we have anything explosive? Like bombs or... napalm?" I ask her.

"No, but we can drop jars of worm oil which the imps can set alight," Geneine replies.

"Then get the harpies to carry jars of oil over their forces and get the imps to burn them. I want the incuponies and succuponies to protect our flanks and I want the goblins to help supply the harpies with the jars. I also want some goblins to help the fel ents to protect the blood apple grove as well," I tell her. All those years playing strategy games like command and conquer and the civilisation series are coming into play, and who said video games would be a waste of time?

"As you wish, Damien," she replies and walks out the door.

"Now about the problem of me not knowing any of my powers or the lack of my scythe..." I say to myself.

I hear a yawn and the shuffling of sheets as Desire starts waking up... "Damiiiieeeen! I'm hungry!" she says groggily and slides off the bed with a light thud.

I can't help but chuckle as every morning she acts like this until she feeds off me... I still think she's acting. "Yeah yeah," I reply and walk over. I then lift her off the floor with one hand, at least if anything I have superhuman strength on my side.

She smiles and instantly latches onto my lips as her tongue coils around mine. She moans as I feel her drain my energy or testosterone and she finishes with a lick on my cheek. "Thanks," she says and goes to take a shower. That's another thing why being the head honcho is good, I've had quick showers every few days to stay as clean as possible. One time was very awkward though when Desire walked in and instead of giving me my privacy, she joined me and scrubbed me down... very vigorously, she had no trouble feeding then...

I take off my newly made PJ's and put on my black trousers, white shirt and black coat and then head outside. I fly up -and when I say fly I mean flap about and lifting slowly into the air- and land onto the tallest building in Felfire. I look out and see a large group of lesser demons marching towards us.

I can't tell how many exactly or what they have but it seems we have a few hours before they arrive.

"Well then, I better see if there's anything I can use as a weapon..." I mutter to myself and jump off to the ground flapping my wings.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: Raiders Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 23 Minutes