ButcherPete

Chapter 100: Sweet Oasis, Bitter Roots

The gates of Sweet Oasis gleamed in the soft light of the southern Hellnian dusk, their bronze-hued metal reflecting the endless nectar spri

The gates of Sweet Oasis gleamed in the soft light of the southern Hellnian dusk, their bronze-hued metal reflecting the endless nectar springs that fed the lush oasis-palace. 

Green-leafed palms swayed gently in the humid air, their shadows stretching long and languid across the courtyard where loyal feasters moved like graceful, watchf...

Chapter 99: The Favor of Avarice

The Grand temple of Greed was not a temple in the traditional sense.

It was an institution, a fortress of commerce, built on black stone and polished pride. Its facade stretched wider than a palace, rising above the skyline of central Neel’s western region like a ledger carved into the heavens. Devils and lower beings came here not to worship, but to transact, because in the Greed territory, contracts were holy, and equity divine.

Abigail arrived at midday. Cloaked and glamoured...

Chapter 98: Unspoken Clause

It had been a week since Abigail last heard from Cashmere.

No update. No coinflip messages. No clever riddles hidden inside locked spellboxes he usually sent for her to decipher, just to be dramatic.

Only radio silence.

And that silence itched behind her ear like a whisper.

But there was no time to dwell on paranoia. Not when she was knee-deep in moss and ankle-deep in blood.

The cavern stirred around her, humid and sharp with the scent of iron-rich soil and fung...

Chapter 97: The Price of a Wrong Question

The journey to Hazy Mountain was quite expensive. A devil of Cashmere’s status didn’t walk when he could buy passage. His golden sedan chair carved from gilded bone made no noise as it hovered past the shrouded slopes. Even the mountain mist seemed to part for him, disturbed not by his presence but by the wealth it represented.

The Dreamveil Compact had once been a joke among factions. A joke with dreams, illusions, and rebellion in its lungs, but a joke nonetheless.

Now?

Chapter 96: Council Maneuverings

Cashmere had no interest in the performance unfolding before him.

His coin, golden piece etched with black sigils, danced between his fingers in slow flips, catching the ambient light with its perfect luster. He’d already flipped it before the meeting began. 

The result… 

[Investigate Further].

Yet again, something in-between. Vague. Dangerous.

A reading like that wasn’t common, and it rarely came without complications. Still, he played the fool i...

Chapter 95: Second Petal of Profanity

Lazmer’s nerves tattered more with every second he sat beneath the weight of Baku’s shadow.

The sky above Hazy Mountain remained broken, heavy with monochrome clouds. But beneath them, something else crept in. Small, invisible threads unraveled through the cracks, unseen by most but undeniable to one man standing there.

Baku’s eyes lowered. Not to Lazmer’s face, but to something floating above his chest.

Lazmer couldn’t see it. But he instinctively felt it.

S...

Chapter 94: The Crimson Sky(Part 2)

The battlefield stilled beneath a sudden sweep of unfamiliar pressure.

Dozeuff’s Tenet still bled narcotic rain across the ruined ground, his monstrous Nullath coiled behind him like a patient nightmare. Yet all eyes turned as one toward the figure descending from the shattered sanctum of the evolution chamber.

Hannya walked slowly, with the calm confidence of a predator whose hunger had long been satisfied and now only lingered to prove a point. Each step she took sent subtle r...

Chapter 93: The Crimson Sky(Part 1)

Lazmer stood atop the black hill, his hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed on the smoldering ruin that Hazy Mountain Fortress was rapidly becoming. From this vantage, he could see the fortress walls fractured by sustained bombardment. Fires burned unchecked. Plumes of smoke wound upward like serpents toward the pale, colorless sky. Scatterthought ballistics still peppered the outer defenses in rhythmic bursts, each shell carrying distortion runes to further erode the mountain’s protect...

Chapter 92: The Power of Love in Action

Some time earlier, before Baku’s breakout.

The bunker beneath Hazy Mountain was carved deep beneath ancient rock, reinforced with runes and bound talismans; it existed for survival, not solace. A refuge from the horrors born of the fissure above, now serving once again from devils and war.

Dim lanterns swung gently, their glow bending faintly under the subtle pressure of the mountain’s twisted reality. Hannya’s acolytes huddled in anxious groups. Civilians pressed together i...

Chapter 91: Broken Dreams(Final)

The Nightmare descended like a silent executioner.

Its pale blue skin shifted into bruised purple, gleaming faintly beneath the dense clouds of haze laced dream mist that churned silently. Its eyes open fully now. Grey, sparkling, pupiless eyes warping the space around it as if gravity itself bent in deference to its gaze.

Baku met it head-on.

Steel kissed claw, the first collision breaking through the fog like a bell tolling through storm clouds, breaking the veil with a cl...

Chapter 90: Broken Dreams(Part 2)

The fog thickened. The beasts multiplied.

Baku moved through them like a phantom wrapped in silk and steel. His swordsmanship made a mockery of the chaos, cutting clean arcs through creatures that should not exist, each step measured with the poise of centuries honed upon endless slaughter.

The enforcers of the Dream Faction had long ceased their frontal assaults. They learned too quickly how futile it was to match blades with Baku in direct combat.

Instead, they hid deeper ...

Chapter 89: Broken Dreams(Part 1)

The Dream Faction moved without hesitation. Fueled by command, determination, and subtle desperation.

At the center of this storm of stolen authority was Lazmer the 22nd Acedia, Advisor and strategist of the Dream Faction, and a man who smiled too easily for someone burning his own future.

He watched from the rear command post, nestled within an illusionary fog that only his men could pierce. The cliffs of Hazy Mountain loomed ahead, but to Lazmer they already belonged to him in s...

Chapter 88: A War Demon's Instruction

The cave system rested in a crevice of Greed Territory's western border, nestled behind overgrown briars and ringed by steep, jagged cliffs. In the day, natural mist wreathed the stone like smoke from a hidden hearth; at night, the wind howled through the tunnels like a lullaby of ghosts.

Inside, a fire crackled gently. Stew bubbled in a bronze pot suspended over the flame. Children huddled in blankets woven from thorn-hide and beast fur, watching the three veiled women move like ritual...

Chapter 87: Cherrymaid Doctrine

The convoy stretched across the black basin like an open wound. Six wagons, iron-spined and bone-tired, groaned over cracked stone as the slavers cracked whips and shouted obscenities. The cart beasts wheezed. The prisoners, emaciated demons curled in corners, didn’t respond.

On both sides of the convoy walked ten contract-devils dressed in merchant suits sewn with Greed-style threading. Four slavers rode ahead on mounts, their laughter echoing.

“Five silver on that one croaki...

Side Story: 6 Months - The Caged God

The tunnels spiraled endlessly. The deeper Vainglory went, the more the void song tightened around his thoughts like a noose.

The first wave had been beasts. Thin, serpent-like things with mouths like grinding stones and poison instead of blood. They’d crawled through the cracks and hissed through overlapping pitch.

He killed the first dozen cleanly.

The second wave had been armored. Chitin-backed horrors with too many legs and plate-shells that refracted light in impossib...

Chapter 86: Cooked Books

Cashmere stood before the mirror gate beneath the Temple of Greed. In its perfect surface, dozens of himself stared back. Older, younger, thinner, heavier, each version clad in a different color of power.

None of them blinked.

None of them moved.

The reflections simply waited, like options the world never took.

He adjusted his gloves and tapped his golden badge onto the gate. Glyphs lit up in a fan-like spiral, forming the triangle of passage. 

[Investor Cla...

Chapter 85: Buy Immediately

The Grand Temple of Greed was without a doubt a peculiar place. 

It didn’t open into a quiet sanctum like the others did.

It opened into a courtyard of screaming chaos.

Rows of sharp-shouldered devils in immaculately tailored suits stood beneath columns of onyx and brass, shouting over one another beneath banners of embroidered crests, scrolls were waved like auction slips, golden coins clinked with language. floating contract parchments drifted overhead like paper do...

Chapter 84: A Master's Effort

The stone hallway of the capital's upper ring reeked of sanctified ink and old power. A polished sterility soaked the walls, every line of the architecture too precise to be comforting. It was built to impress but also to remind.

‘You do not belong here’, that was the message beneath the gold-veined marble and ever-glowing mage-lamps.

Abigail adjusted her posture anyway, spine tall beneath the weight of her ceremonial black robe. Its hems were dulled by weeks of templ...

Chapter 83: The Heart With Three Faces

Hazy Mountain Ascension Chambers, Hours earlier.

The room was quiet.

Mist hung in low layers, veiling the carved stone tiles with a dreamlike haze. The natural warmth of the mountain breathing through its veins, and the slow, deliberate beat of a heart preparing to change.

Hannya sat cross-legged at the center of the sanctum, her veil draped across her lap.

Before her stood Baku, arms clasped behind his back, posture straight and unmoved. He looked down at her with the...

Chapter 82: Chaos and Concentration

They came by foot.

Under cover of mist, wrapped in cloaks and sound-muting sigils, the small party descended the north slope of Hazy Mountain without banner or name. The Superbia crest was hidden beneath traveling robes. No colors, no declarations, no procession, just silence and practiced discipline.

At the front walked Lady *Raquel 15th Superbia, the matriarch of a branch family and mother to the disgraced devil noble, Showeuff. Her long golden braid was wrapped tightly around h...

Chapter 81: Velvet Teeth and Honeyed Words

The trio left the Acedia estate without escort.

The gates of the Dream Faction slid shut behind them like the eyelids of something that never slept, finally relaxed.

Outside, the city’s twilight carried a soft wind. Magic lanterns hummed along floating rails above the capital’s inner districts. Gold and white light reflected off marble towers and slow-gliding couriers. Nothing felt urgent here, nothing felt broken.

But Hannya had already chipped at the first crack, the f...

Character Model: Hannya(Pre-evolution) & Old Cover Pictures

I am still working on getting the model for Hannya to be more consistent, but I think it's coming along well! I'm still new to training models and I'm thinking about just getting software for it rather than generating it online and editing it in an editor. If you readers have any suggestions on making the images better and more consistent, as well as software that could help, feel free to comment below! I hope you like what I have so far! Next month I'll be doing Corrine and since I have the ...

[Map Draft]Current Known Hellnia Locations

Hey all! This is the closest current map draft of the locations the story has visited in Hellnia. You have no idea how long it took to generate the right(close to right) geography for this map, and in truth, I'm not quite satisfied with it yet, but I promised some visuals this weekend and it's already passed midnight, so we will go with this one until I can get it the way I truly want it. XD If any of you have some experience in prompting PLEASE send advice if you have any!

I hope you l...

Chapter 80: The Waking Scheme

The Acedia Estate did not boast like other faction halls.

There were no fountains flowing with molten silver, no windows of gaudy glass, no perfumed courtyards of exotic hel-lilies or rare dream-lotus. Instead, the estate was quiet. Unnervingly so. Low towers rose like fingers from the estate, cloaked in grayish-blue ivy, their windows shaded with silver-etched wards that dulled sound and masked presence.

The Dream Faction was built on control, nothing more.

And today, that ...

Chapter 79: The Measure of Masks

There was no snow in the Capital that day. No hail fell from the sky, no howling winds to signal a cold snap. And yet, those gathered beneath the towering stages of the ceremonial plaza felt a chill ripple through their skin as if something ancient were brushing past them, unseen, but not unfelt.

Above the high-arched square, ten banners hung from curved poles shaped like horns and bones. Symbols of each noble devil faction, stitched in gold threads, a medley of colors, and illusion-lig...

Side Story: 6 months - Cadet Corrine

The estate of Lord Sinclair Boyd was a sprawling, ugly thing. More gold-leaf than stone, more glass than sense. On a clear day, its reflective pillars shimmered like vanity knives above the dry plains near Gomorrah's border, the holy land for demons. But today, the air shimmered with heat for a different reason.

Smoke.

Dark, angry plumes roiled in the distance, curling above burning watchtowers and scattered ranks of retreating guards. The sky boiled amber as alarms rang like brok...

[Rewrite]Chapter 1: The End of the World was Mid

In another place, in the past.

Tap-Tap-Tap

In a dimly lit room, a woman sat in front of her computer, typing indifferently. Her bloodshot eyes locked on a glowing wall of text.

Tap-Tap-Tap

The room was modest. A neatly made twin bed sat in the corner, opposite three monitors that illuminated the worn hoodie and average face of the woman sitting before them. Her unkempt black hair framed sharp but unremarkable features...

Poll Results and Plans!

Hello all members! I hope your week has been going well!

Just so you know we have gained 1500 followers on RR! It was a mile stone I wanted to get to and we got it! We are getting MASSIVE right now! XD Thanks to all that has joined the patreon as both free and paid, seeing the engagement and joining members always brighten my stressful and boring days lol and I hope this story gives you a similar feeling!

Now, I have seen the polls, and of course you guys overwhelmingly voted for ...

Chapter 78: Kindling of the Heart

The hall was quiet except for the echo of footsteps on smooth wood. Salitha walked alone down the corridor of banners and veils, a ceremonial path prepared for her second introduction to the mistress of the mountain.

She wore her formal robes now, rose-gold with black thread lining the sleeves, no sigil of faction embroidered on the chest. She had scrubbed it clean the night before. If she was to be seen, she would be seen as herself, not what she had been.

At the end of the corri...

Chapter 77: Proof Through Action

Snow clung to the spires of the Hazy Mountain when Shela returned.

She arrived without escort, walking the winding path up from the valley alone, her cloak thin but unsullied. She did not pause or trudge as she advanced, the wind that once curled against her back now moved aside.

When she passed the outer gate, the guards stood straighter.

When she crossed into the acolyte quarter, silence followed in her wake.

It wasn’t just that she’d come back from the Capital.<...