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Cedric sent the Night Stalkers back to where they came from.
The difference is that they're his spies now. He severed their connection to the soul network of the demon race, which was almost the same as them being killed in action.
This so-called 'Soul Network' is something he discovered from reading the Night Stalkers' memories. It's the secret behind their 'Immortality'.
Demons that are killed by humans won't truly die. They will lose their flesh, yes, but so long as their souls remain intact, they will return. Upon their physical death, the souls of demons will be called back to the Soul Network, joining the queue for rebirth.
A machine called the Flesh Incubator will be responsible for attaching their souls to a new set of physical bodies, and in there, they will stay until the fusion is over. Once this process was over, they got to walk and live again.
With the Soul Network and the Flesh Incubator, it's a miracle that humans lasted for this long. They've got to thank Acala for that because she directly interfered with this cycle.
To protect herself and her citizens, Acala tampered with the Soul Network. She forcibly connected the souls of the Demon Race to the Purgatory Realm in exchange for sending her own people in there to pit them against demons as well.
Demons that are killed repeatedly in the Purgatory Realm will slowly but surely lose their memories, the oldest ones first. The more deaths they experience, the worse it gets for them. Demon souls are the product of the memories they lose.
Her interference with the Soul Network is what kept the Demon Race at bay. The demons think that if she could do it once, she could do it again. If they cornered her too much, they're afraid that she would just blow up their soul network and end their false immortality.
That would be the worst outcome for them. Trading their immortality for the chance of claiming rare resources doesn't seem worth it, but their demon god refused to give up on her, so they couldn't do anything but keep their operations active.
Cedric was pleased by what he learned. Now, he has an actual target. He has no plans on doing anything drastic right now, but it's good to know where the enemy's vulnerabilities are.
He also did something to improve the stealth capabilities of the Night Stalkers. Because while they're practically invisible to the human senses, the Demon Race has a way to discover them. He countered these measures with sheer skills in runes and symbols. Now, even if a Demon Emperor were to personally come down, they wouldn't catch even a whiff of their scent.
Of course, these measures aren't effective for Cedric himself. They're his slaves, sure, but it's best to be careful just in case.
Still, from the perspective of the Demon Race, this batch of Night Stalkers is no more. Whether they succeeded in their task or not didn't matter in their grand scheme. Demons are arrogant to the bone; they look down on humans, so this task was nothing more than a little prank in their eyes.
Cedric will make them pay for that.
"Around 10:34 am of this day, Acala told us that the Demon Race apparently sent 9 Night Stalkers to spy on us," Armstrong stated.
"Yes, we failed to sense them, and no, the scanners weren't slacking off in their jobs nor their machines malfunctioned. These Night Stalkers were carrying something that rendered our scanners useless. And with their abilities, they could've easily phased through our walls without us any wiser."
"Sure, we would've responded to their aggression the moment they made a move, but Night Stalkers are raised to be assassins. Their target was never us; it's our children."
His statement caused everyone's countenance to turn grimmer.
"Yes, their orders were to assassinate our geniuses again. This isn't the first time, and I doubt that it'll be their last attempt."
"And if you think that this is bad, oh, it gets worse." Armstrong snapped his fingers, and new system windows appeared in front of the listeners.
"Aside from the trinket that neutralized our scanners, these Night Stalkers had their kidneys replaced with a canister that held potent posions. If triggered, it would easily cover an entire city with a cloud miasma, killing everyone within. There's also a bomb planted on their brains to prevent us from tampering with their memories."
"It's been hours since this report came in and nothing happened," someone from the listeners pointed out. "Is it safe to assume that the threats were neutralized?"
"Yes," the High Marshal confirmed. "And we have Acala to thank for that."
"She caught them. She didn't just neutralize them; she even enslaved them," Armstrong stated with a grin.
His words caused everyone to be surprised.
"You'll get ideas on how she achieved this by perusing through the reports on your screen. My point is that, with these Night Stalkers enslaved, we turned their spies into our own," Armstrong explained.
"As all of you here are well informed about our situation, I don't think I need to explain just how useful this can be. With these Night Stalkers being our spies from within, we'd be able to respond to threats even more effectively from now on."
This is when they realized that they weren't gathered here just to hear about bad news. Indeed, having these Night Stalkers on their side could potentially turn the tide of the upcoming war in their favor.
"Everyone, once we're finished handling the changes brought by the recent Origin Energy Storm, our next focus would be our war efforts. I encourage everyone to work hard because if we used our cards correctly..."
"Reclaiming Azure Terra for ourselves might no longer be just a dream anymore."