And when the sword pierced through the skull of the last demon soldier that was crawling on the ground in an attempt to get away, it signified the end of the battle. His Undead utterly destroyed the demon army that was fighting against his Undead Scourge.
This was a great victory and a great feeling that Samiel had from the victory over the Demon Army. While indeed, he used a great deal of subterfuge to achieve victory and not just pure military might, for Samiel, nothing was forbidden as long as it led to victory.
In contrast, in the Teleryan Pass, most of the demons that were fighting against each other in their maddened state killed each other, and if not, then in their weakened state, the curses that were inflicted upon them were enough to finish the job.
Most of the curses that Samiel used on them could even kill the cursed person if he was in a very weakened state, like with the demons that were right now either severely injured from fighting each other but somehow managed to survive or were inflicted with the whole bunch of curses at the same time.
Samiel finished collecting the souls from the area of the battle and Teleryan Pass, having reached the staggering number of one million and something souls that he collected during the time that the Undead Scourge was active, which was a very high number considering the fact that he was still only a Bronze-Tier Professional.
Of course, from the initial 400 or something Bronze-Tier Undead, approximately one hundred were killed during the battle. This was a great loss o Samiel's part, but considering the bigger image of the fight, it was an excellent result because only approximately one-fourth of his elite troops were destroyed and Samiel could always rebuild them with enough Mana Crystals and some Souls.
From Negash's Undead, they were of no concern because they were at full force, as Negash was resurrecting the Undead that got destroyed during the fight between the demon army and the Undead Scourge.
Because Negash's Undead were just average Undead and were weak at that, they were no loss even if all of them got destroyed in a fight because they were not that valuable in the first place. They were just standard Undead, maybe a bit more stronger than other Undead used by different Liches, so they weren't special and precious compared to the ones that Samiel had.
Naturally, during the battle, Negash kept resurrecting the Undead one by one in hundreds, so the final result was the same; his present Undead Army was even stronger than before because he obtained better base material for the Undead in the form of corpses of the demon soldiers.
Of course, then there were corpses of the Silver-Tier and Bronze-Tier Demon Professionals, which Samiel had stored within his dimensional ring because those would be used to create his Undead; because they were strong when they were alive, they would make for a splendid base material for the Undead.
Dharzug has killed the three Silver-Tier Demon Professionals whom he has been playing with and clearly looked very satisfied with the battle because there wasn't his typical grumpy expression present... though in regard to orks, it was challenging to tell their facial expression just by looking at them because they always looked like they were angry or something.
With the souls he obtained and many of them were from relatively powerful Professionals, Samiel needed to decide on what to do with them. Certainly, he would eat some of them, mainly the ones who were originating from the Silver-Tier and Bronze-Tier Professionals, because the stronger the soul, the better taste and it would also quench the hunger better, not talking about the fact it could increase his Level if he was lucky.
He already prepared one-half of the obtained souls to be sacrificed to the Outer Gods, more specifically to the Azathoth's Court, in some sort of ceremonial sacrifice, while the remaining souls would be used to increase the Levels of Ashimer and Negash. For the Undead, Leveling Up was a relatively precarious situation because, as they are not technically alive, they can't follow the same procedure as anyone who was alive.
This led the Undead to depend on external factors to increase their Levels and of course, one of the most dependable methods was through Soul Fires of other Undead or through absorbing Souls of other beings. Naturally, the Undead couldn't absorb the full potential of the Soul of a living being, something which Samiel could technically achieve due to his racial heritage and Level 3 Ultimate Ability Soul Devour at the later stages, but the Undead could absorb only the Soul Energy.
Because the Soul Energy or its more official name, the Soul Force, was only part of the Soul, the benefits that the Undead obtained from the Souls they absorbed were relatively small. Due to that fact, they needed to absorb a lot of them if they wished to continuously Level Up and get stronger; of course, the more Soul Force they got, the better for them because Soul Force was also a fundamental requirement for the Evolution to a higher form of Undead Lifeforms.
Without it, they will remain stagnant until something or someone destroys them. Such was the cruel fate of the Undead, who didn't have the luck to absorb a lot of Soul Force and elevate into something greater or to Level Up and become powerful Undead on their own.
"Start looting..."
Samiel stated as this was his favorite part after the battle... which was, of course, to loot the corpses of the killed and defeated so he could obtain some treasures and money from them. They won't be needing it anymore because...well, they are dead.
Unfortunately for Samiel, these demons were poor as fuck; nobody had anything of notable importance or even something that could be considered valuable; neither the most powerful members of the demon army, which were the Silver-Tier demon Professionals, had something on their bodies.
So with this, Samiel was relatively disappointed because the only things he recovered were armor, weapons and some equipment from the corpses of killed demons that could be reforged into new equipment and then sold through the IMC when he really launched it, as while formally established a relatively long time ago, it still lacked the people to operate at the full force.
After it was found out that the corpses didn't hold anything valuable, Samiel decided that it was time to go to the capital of the Human Brotherhood to join the fray as the conclusion of this entire mess on the 8th Floor of the Tower was finally near.
Perhaps he would be able to find something good in the capital of Humans. His aim was to get into the city and loot their vaults and obtain as many resources if possible... naturally, it was also very highly possible that there won't be anything to loot because if someone from the Avalon Kingdom had enough brains, they would send some of their people to take it back.
In the first place, they created the Human Brotherhood, so it wouldn't be that surprising if they decided to just take everything back in the first place. A faction like Avalon Kingdom won't be that stupid and Samiel knew that it was just a pipe dream to steal the hidden stashes of resources that the leaders of the Human Brotherhood amassed.
So for sure, there were some hidden agents who would have the sole mission of stealing the dimensional equipment or whatever place where they were hiding all the loot. About this, Samiel was sure of it because if not, he would be certainly questioning the capabilities and leadership of one of the 13 Gates that ruled the Material Plane of the Cosmos.
"Did you find anything useful from the corpses of demons?"
Yvraine asked him when she noticed that he finished counting the things that were salvaged from the corpses of the demon army and seeing that his expression was not that good and his mood was relatively gloomy, she knew that the loot was not up to his standards.
"Those poor bastards barely had anything worth more than a few tens of thousand Credits... while good, but considering the size of their army, the quality of their equipment is shit."
Samiel cursed because he got some scraps that could be hardly called valuable, probably the demons were once against saving money on the equipment for the lower-tier Professionals... commonly seen thing in the bigger factions or those who didn't care about their members.
"And what would you expect from them... demons are famous across the Cosmos for being cheap stakes with their subordinates and especially with the lower-tiered ones. They are typically armed with either metal scraps or some cheap mass-produced equipment in the forges of the third order..."
Yvraine commented from the side, as she teased Samiel about this, though he wasn't actually that angry in the first place, more like disappointed than angry.
"I know, I know... but, can't I at least hope?"
He asked rhetorically, not awaiting any answer as the battlefield was slowly entirely cleaned, all corpses that would be used for the Necromancy were already stored in the Dimensional Equipment, something that Samiel was greatly thankful for because only after he entered the Tower's 3rd Floor and higher, he realized that how lucky he was that he never had to worry about the transportation of things.
Even in this army of tens of thousands, he only got a few pieces of Spatial Equipment because they were so rare for common people. Not that to big factions, for example, Bishop Antigonus who had a high affinity for Space and Dimensional Attributes, could produce countless of them in one day without putting serious effort into it.
"You can, but for the future not at least try it with something far more useful than these ones."
She said with a smirk as he grumbled that she was partially right.