Creating A Succubus Army In A Fantasy World!

The Beast King finally turned its full attention to Creed, and the young man instinctively regretted every life choice that had led him to this moment.

Those huge eyes focused on him with the weight of a thousand black holes, and Creed felt his very soul trying to crawl into the deepest corner of his body and hide behind his appendix.

The pressure of that gaze was indescribable. It was like being stared at by the combined disapproval of every teacher, parent, and authority figure who had ever existed, multiplied by the judgmental energy of a billion cosmic entities who all thought he was a complete disappointment!

"Well, this is it," Creed thought with the kind of resigned acceptance that comes right before something truly terrible happens.

"Here goes nothing. It's time to know what death feels like."

The Beast King raised one massive claw, and Creed felt reality begin to unravel around him.

But instead of the slow, dramatic dissolution that had claimed Lilith and Tierra, his death was much more direct and practical.

The creature simply flicked its finger, and Creed experienced what could only be described as being hit by a freight train made of pure concept of ending.

Bam!

One moment he was standing there, desperately hoping that his ancient power would kick in and save the day, and the next moment everything went black with the finality of a book slamming shut.

When consciousness returned to Creed, he was back inside the familiar metallic walls of his assessment pod, floating in a weird nutrient gel that made him feel like a pickled vegetable.

The transition from cosmic horror battlefield to sterile school equipment was so jarring that for a moment he wondered if the entire experience had been some kind of incredibly vivid nightmare.

But the lingering taste of dimensional storm in his mouth and the phantom pain from where the wolf creatures had clawed him told him that everything had been horribly, embarrassingly real.

At least, as real as a simulation could possibly ever get!

He pressed the emergency exit button with more force than was probably necessary, his face already twisting into an expression that could have curdled milk from three rooms away.

The pod hissed open with a sound like an angry cat, and Creed emerged from the nutrient gel looking like a very angry, very wet, very humiliated teenager who had just experienced the cosmic equivalent of getting stuffed into a locker by the universe's biggest bully.

Instructor Varien was waiting for him with an expression that somehow managed to combine surprise, confusion, and what looked suspiciously like suppressed amusement.

The man's eyebrows were raised so high they had practically disappeared into his hairline, and he was looking at Creed like he had just witnessed something that defied all known laws of physics and common sense.

"Well," Varien said slowly, his voice carrying the careful tone of someone trying not to laugh at a student's misfortune,

"That was certainly unexpected. What exactly happened in there, Creed? You came out faster than any student in the history of this assessment.

"And that's definitely not a good thing, considering that the whole point was to survive for seven hours, and you barely managed to last for one."

Creed felt his face turn approximately the same color as a ripe tomato, but somehow even more embarrassing.

Here he was, the supposed star student, the hope candidate, the entrance exam champion, and he had just achieved the dubious honor of failing an assessment faster than anyone had ever failed it before?!

It was like winning a gold medal in the Olympics of sucking at things!

"I met a Beast King," Creed said flatly, his voice carrying the deadpan delivery of someone who had completely given up on life making any kind of sense.

"In an assessment designed for first-year students. And you're surprised that I came out first? What exactly was I supposed to do against that thing? Challenge it to a dance-off? Ask it nicely to please stop trying to delete me from existence? Maybe offer it a friendship bracelet and hope for the best?"

Varien's expression shifted from amused confusion to genuine shock, his face going pale as the implications of Creed's words sank in.

"Wait, you actually encountered a Beast King? In a first-year assessment simulation? That's… that's not supposed to be possible. Can you describe what it looked like?"

Creed proceeded to give a detailed description of the cosmic horror that had just casually murdered him and his summons.

He gave a description of the Beast King's massive form, its galaxy eyes, its reality-warping presence, and its casual ability to delete people from existence just by looking at them funny.

With each detail he provided, Varien's face grew paler and more horrified, until he looked like someone who had just been told that his house was built on top of an active volcano that was also haunted by the ghosts of very angry tax auditors.

"Oh no," Varien whispered, his voice barely audible and filled with the kind of dread that suggested he had just realized something truly awful.

"That's not just a Beast King, Creed. What you just described is a Greater Beast King. Those things are cosmic-level threats that can destroy entire planets just by being in a bad mood.

"No wonder you came out early. Honestly, I'm surprised you managed to survive for an entire hour against something like that. Most people would have been turned into cosmic dust within the first five minutes."

This information did absolutely nothing to improve Creed's mood.

In fact, it made him feel even worse, because now he knew that not only had he failed spectacularly, but he had failed against something that was apparently several levels above what anyone could reasonably expect him to handle.

It was like being told that he had lost a fight against a nuclear weapon and then having someone explain that actually, it wasn't just any nuclear weapon, it was the nuclear weapon that all other nuclear weapons looked up to and respected!

It was too unfair!

Feeling even more depressed and humiliated than before, Creed decided to check his system interface, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, his mysterious powers had gained something useful from the experience of being brutally murdered by a cosmic horror.

After all, video games always gave you experience points even when you died horribly, right? Maybe his system worked the same way.

He opened his status screen with the desperate optimism of someone buying a lottery ticket, silently praying that he would see some kind of improvement, some new ability, some indication that his humiliating defeat had at least been good for something.

But as he scanned through his stats and abilities, his expression grew darker and more frustrated with each passing second.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing had changed. His stats were exactly the same. His abilities were exactly the same. His level was exactly the same

It was as if the entire traumatic experience of being murdered by a Greater Beast King had been completely meaningless from a progression standpoint.

He had suffered through cosmic horror, watched his beloved summons get deleted from existence, experienced his own death, and had nothing to show for it except psychological trauma and public humiliation!

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Creed exploded, his voice echoing through the assessment chamber.

Before he could properly process his spectacular failure and the complete emptiness of his system interface, another pod hissed open across the assessment chamber with the same angry cat sound that had announced his own humiliating exit.

Out stepped Nicholas Grey, looking exactly like someone who had just experienced his own personal cosmic nightmare.

His usually perfectly styled silver hair was plastered to his head with nutrient gel, and his face wore the same expression of frustrated disbelief that Creed was probably sporting right about now.

Nicholas Grey was the kind of person who made other students feel inadequate just by existing.

He had come in second place in the entrance exam, right behind Creed, and he carried himself with the quiet confidence of someone who knew he was destined for greatness.

He was also one of the few people who could somewhat match Creed in terms of raw potential, which made their relationship a weird mix of mutual respect and competitive rivalry.

The two young men locked eyes across the chamber, and for a moment, neither of them said anything.

They both knew exactly what had happened to the other person, because there was only one possible explanation for why the two top students in their class had both failed the assessment faster than anyone in the academy's history!

"Let me guess," Nicholas said slowly, his voice carrying the flat tone of someone who had just been personally insulted by the universe itself.

"You ran into something that was way, way above the pay grade of a first-year student assessment. Something that made you question whether the academy's safety protocols were written by people who actually understand what the word 'safety' means."

Creed let out a bitter laugh that sounded more like a dying animal than anything resembling humor.

"Greater Beast King," he said simply, as if those three words explained everything that was wrong with the world.

"Apparently, the assessment simulation thought it would be funny to drop a cosmic-level threat on me instead of, you know, the normal monsters that first-year students are supposed to handle."

Nicholas's eyebrows shot up so high they nearly disappeared into his hairline. "Greater Beast King? Seriously? I got a regular Beast King, and I thought that was unfair.

"Mine just had ice control powers that could probably freeze time. Yours could probably sneeze and accidentally destroy an asteroid."

"Oh, it gets better," Creed continued, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "It didn't even fight me directly. It just looked at my summons and they ceased to exist.

"Like, literally ceased to exist. Not killed, not defeated, just… gone. Deleted from reality like they were typos in the cosmic word processor."

Nicholas winced in sympathy. "That's rough. My Beast King at least had the courtesy to fight me properly before it turned me into an ice sculpture.

"I managed to reflect exactly one hit before it froze me solid and then shattered me like a Christmas ornament. Very dignified way to die, really."

Both of them stood there for a moment, contemplating the absolute ridiculousness of their situation.

Here they were, the two most promising students in their class, and they had both been eliminated from their first major assessment faster than students who probably couldn't even withstand a single strike from them.

"We're never going to live this down, are we?" Creed asked, already knowing the answer but hoping against hope that maybe Nicholas would have some brilliant insight that would make everything better.

"Nope," Nicholas replied cheerfully, though his smile looked more like a grimace.

"We're going to be known as the two geniuses who couldn't last an hour in a first-year assessment. They'll probably use us as examples of what happens when you get too confident."

They both sighed simultaneously, united in their shared humiliation and the knowledge that their reputations had just taken a dive off a very tall cliff.