Chapter 657 656: ’Warm’ Gratitude

Chapter 657 Chapter 656: 'Warm' Gratitude

With the disappearance of Cali, the area became quiet again as we all looked between one another, before Leone walked forwards to join us, her thin knife appearing in her hands as she crouched beside the dead Fiend, beginning to pry off the scales and harvest some of the Fiend's materials.

I joined her as well, asking "Should we be harvesting the meat as well, or just the bones? Can we use Fiend flesh for anything?"

Eriana - or Cernia, who knows - crouched beside me and replied "If you would like to, go ahead. There has been little experimentation done on anything related to Fiends, so perhaps it has beneficial properties, maybe it doesn't..."

Sighing, I just began to slice through the flesh as best I could, sawing through the tough, almost metallic like muscle and tendons to reveal the silvery bones beneath.

As I was working - alongside one of the guards and Leone - the citizens around the city had begun to peek out of their windows, the sudden noise of fighting now completely gone, making them curious even as they fearfully looked outside.

Jahi and the others were standing guard around us, on the lookout for any stragglers that might have been hidden away somewhere in the city, and they instantly took notice of the citizens peering out from their homes, remaining in place even as the braver citizens began to step out and enter the square.

Short and stout, the burly, bearded Dwarves that stepped out stared at us fearfully, with a few shaking their heads and turning back to their homes as they got a better look at the scene of slaughter around us.

The bravest of the Dwarves took in the sight of the massacre and wrinkled their noses, approaching Jahi warily as she stared down at them, her dual metal great sword resting on her shoulder; beside her was Nirinia, and the Djinn only made the two look even more imposing as they stood together, their height making them tower over the Dwarves that approached them.

Four were brave enough to approach the Demoness and Djinn, looking up at them with slight scowls as one said "I guess... we need to thank ye for savin' us, hm? What a job ya did..."

He looked around the square, his brown eyes landing on the various dead Cultists as well as the sheer amount of blood and viscera that caked the cobblestones and buildings.

Though the worst offense was the cracked, broken and scorched cobblestones from Leone's spells, the Vampire's explosive ordnance causing quite a bit of damage to the area from the attacks she launched towards the Fiend.

The Dwarves took that all in on top of the bloody massacre, and the original speaker turned back to Jahi and repeated "What a job ya did..."

The Demoness stared down at the Dwarves for a moment more before looking towards Nirinia, who just shook her head and muttered "Dwarven gratitude..."

"What's there to be grateful for..? They'd've moved on anyways, but now we got to clean all this mess up! Are ye going to pay for it?!" n(.o-)v((E.(1((b)-1)/n

I raised a brow as I stopped what I was doing, looking back at the group of Dwarves feeling rather curious if this was natural for them, though Jahi seemed to have no desire to mince words or give the Dwarves any sort of 'Noble courtesy' as she spat "They would not have moved on, you dumbass. They'd have stayed here and bled this city dry for their own gain, killing anyone who spoke out against them and enjoying the warmth of your women if they so pleased. As for the 'mess'? Unless you wanted me to take the time to render each and every Cultist unconscious and transport them outside the city to be killed, there would be a 'mess'. Deal with it. Your city is safe, just messy. Would you rather be living in fear of death and slavery instead?"

The Dwarf grit his teeth as he stared at the glowering Demoness above, only to step back as the Djinn smirked at him, saying "You see that large blue thing right there? That would've dismantled this city brick by brick for its own amusement. It would have forced all of the city to slave away and rebuild something for itself, something that would be used to go against the Empire. So shut up and deal with it."

The four Dwarves glanced towards the Fiend's corpse, and I smirked as I sliced off another slab of meat, blood caking my arms and splattered against my face, making them shudder as they swiftly looked away from me, leaving me to continue harvesting these wonderful materials for later.

Anput moved over to join me, inspecting the silvery ulna that I had removed and muttering "Do you think that these would make good weapons? It doesn't appear to be attuned..."

"Maybe. Feels and looks metallic, should be quite strong of a material. Don't know about attunement or the like, but it wouldn't hurt to try? If it isn't, it would still be quite the trophy, no? A centerpiece for our future home, perhaps?"

"Hmm... that sounds nice~! Plate the skull in some metal and adorn it with gemstones or something..."

Nodding, I glanced at Leone and saw the small pile of scales beside her, the three of us ignoring the small altercation between Jahi and the Dwarves, who were being a tad stubborn about whether or not the Asmodia House would need to pay for damages, and I had tuned out since I was getting just~ a tad angry at the Dwarves, though Adelina and the other guard joined the Demoness in defusing the situation, making sure it didn't escalate to something that would do harm to either party.

All in all, the disassembling of the Fiend was a quick process as we turned it from a corpse to a pile of parts, with the meat getting bundled into packages of stone to keep them from rotting while the rest were just stored away, leaving us with quite a bit of materials to utilize.

It - admittedly - felt a tad weird butchering something humanoid in appearance, especially something sentient, but at the same time it was a Fiend, so who knew just how valuable its parts were.

So much so that I gathered some of its blood into vials that Leone had on hand, wondering if there were potions that could be concocted from this blue liquid... even if it was slightly disgusting to think about.

But, I had long since accepted that the things inside of potions tend to be quite... disgusting...