The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The first chain snapped because Austin told it no.

It flung toward his throat from Malrec’s left shoulder, green links biting into the air with a scream. Austin caught it with one clawed hand. Territorial Defiance burned behind his eyes.

[Hostile command recognized: SEIZE.]

[Authority fragment contested.]

[Refusal acknowledged.]

The chain fell slack.

Malrec blinked.

Austin snapped the dead links apart and flung them away. The metal sang against the black stone, smoking where his stolen authority had scarred it.

"You cannot do that," Malrec said.

Austin wiped green blood off his knuckles. "I just did."

The demon lord’s face seemed to solidify. The cut across his chest still leaked around the wound Austin had created near his chain- core. The missing fragment had unraveled Malrec’s halo. Several chains hovered now too sluggishly, like they could no longer remember which commands they answered to.

Outside the challenge ground Austin could hear the crowd again. The Authority Breach had broken the seal. Demons were cheering from rooftops. Contract brokers debated their new status aloud. Malrec’s soldiers eyed their lord with a distrust Austin could taste through the black stone.

Fear had entered the army.

Malrec raised both hands.

The street beyond the circle quaked.

Austin understood what he was trying to do only a moment before the System caught it.

[Hostile authority challenge: EXTRACT OUTER NETWORK.]

[Lord Malrec intends to claim all declared assets under existing territorial registry.]

The cage wagons outside rattled violently.

Chains around the adult prisoners’ wrists and throats flared green. Kaela shouted something beyond the boundary. Elena reached for the nearest cage door, but the seal repelled her hand.

Austin felt hatred coil clean and fast inside him.

Malrec smiled once more, but it didn’t come easily. "You wanted this to be public. Let them see what your precious rules keep hidden." He waved a chained hand at the prisoners. "Look at them."

"You can’’t touch them," Austin said.

"I already touched them." Malrec’s voice dripped with murder. "Every person in those wagons answers to me. You tore away a few chains and called it freedom. I can show them whose name is written into the links."

The green links cinched.

Austin reached outward with Territorial Defiance. He could feel Malrec’s network now, like a web draped over the lord’s wounded core: cages, chain hounds, soldiers waiting for orders, branded laborers in the blocks behind them. Hundreds of commands. Thousands upon thousands of lines of ownership.

He could not devour it all.

Not without becoming something stitched together entirely of other people’s chains.

So he found another flaw.

The biggest one.

Austin opened DEVOUR around the command that kept the cage line intact.

The pain struck him instantly. Malrec’s chain network resisted with centuries of names the lord had ever catalogued. His vision stuttered with stolen moments: demon women in iron collars, lesser demons kneeling in rows, men broken into labor pits, contracts signed in blood by people who never should have had a choice at all.

The hunger screamed for him to take the whole registry.

Austin snarled and cut everything away except one command.

OBEY THE HOLDER.

He bit his teeth together.

"Refuse," Austin ordered through clenched teeth.

The challenge ground exploded with light.

For one breathless moment, nothing happened.

Then the chains around the cage wagons snapped.

One collar detonated apart. Then another. The green glow spread down the line like a flame burning backward. Adult demon prisoners staggered out of the wagons, blinking at their unlocked hands. Malrec’s soldiers shouted and reached for weapons, but half of them hesitated when their own collars sparked away.

The crowd cheered.

Malrec’s face whitened.

The demon lord advanced.

Austin only managed to block the first attack. Malrec’s fist connected with his ribs with enough chain-pressure to buckle him backward. A second punch shattered the root armor across Austin’s back. The lord grasped him by the throat and lifted him off his feet.

"You do not understand what you have done," Malrec gritted through clenched teeth.

Austin punched the hand encircling his neck. "I broke your fucking chains."

"They are not chains." Malrec’s voice was flat. "They are reminders."

"Reminders of what?"

"That even the weak should have someone holding their throat." Chains around Malrec’s wrists churned with fresh hatred. "I care for my authority. Are you going to care for theirs?"

Austin laughed though it sounded horrible.

Malrec slammed him into the ground.

Black stone shattered beneath Austin’s back. Something tore in his shoulder, but he didn’t care. Hungry wanted the full file. Wanted Root- Graft Overdrive unlocked once more, wanted more armor, more muscle mass, more of that unnatural strength which had knocked down the ram thrower.

Austin gave him none of that.

Instead, he took shadows of each.

Roots tangled his injured shoulder. Black plates rebuilt his ribs. His humanity number throbbed in the corner of his eye.

[Humanity: 81.9%.]

[Instinct replacement proceeding.]

Malrec noticed the change and smirked. "There you go. You want to protect them, then become just like me."

Austin looked down at the demon lord’s hand squeezing his throat.

Then at Malrec’s army.

The freed prisoners were charging toward Grand Meridian. Kaela had grabbed one of the chain poles and was wrenching captives loose from the handlers. Elena guarded the gate with Seven, guiding survivors inside. Rin sliced between the wagons in strips of scarlet silk, crushing down every handler that tried to interfere with the breakout.

They were not waiting around for Austin to save them.

They were fighting because they had chosen whom to fight for.

"That’ s where you’ re wrong," Austin gritted out.

He leaned into Malrec’s pressure.

The lord mistook his stagger for weakness.

Austin stabbed a claw into the buckled shell around Malrec’s core.

Malrec keened. His chains whipped around him like whips. Austin caught one, then another, wrenching them into refusal with Territorial Defiance.

"Hold him," Austin ordered. Coldly.

The chains stilled.

Then turned on their master.

They lashed around Malrec’s wrists, elbows, and chest. Not enough chains to restrain a lord forever. Enough to distract him. Enough to give the crowd something they should have never believed possible.

Malrec thrashed against the bindings, green blood foaming from his mouth.

"You cannot issue commands against my authority."

"I’ m not commanding it." Austin twisted harder on the chains closest to Malrec’s throat. "I’ m showing that it can be disobeyed."

The demon lord ripped two chains free. The movement opened his chest wound wider.

Austin watched the corepulse.

He watched his chance.

He also saw what he’d lose to reach it.

To claim Malrec’s core, Austin would need to allow his opponent’s remaining chain network to stitch through him once more. The lord still commanded enough authority to tear Austin apart should the challenge fail. One wrong step and his monstrous instincts would shred him to pieces.

Hungry whispered pain was just data.

Austin wanted to scream at how soothing that sounded.

Malrec shredded the last chain from his flesh and fell backwards, clawing at clean air. Every soldier in his army had just witnessed their master buckled by his own authoritarian regime.

The challenge System bloomed across the sky.

[Significant command structure dismantled.]

[Lord Malrec: authority relinquished.]

[Claimant authority recognized.]

[Initiating phase: CORE CLAIM.]

The black boundary condensed rapidly.

Outside it, Malrec’s force split visibly. Some soldiers backed away from the empty cages. Others tossed their weapons rather than meet the gaze of the people they’d been ordered to cage. Austin couldn’t unlock everyone with a single word, but he had planted the seed. In a dictatorship forged through terror, the smallest seed could grow into a weapon.

There would be no containment after this point.

Malrec eyed Austin through the falling ash, blood green around his fangs and slaughter beneath his eyes.

Austin flexed his clawed hands.

"Now," Austin said, "let’s find out who gets to keep the district, the prisoners, and the future of everyone inside these walls tonight."

Together.

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