Crusader King

Cades had been clashing with what he had done for a few weeks now, he longed to "redeem" himself, if not in others eyes, then at least in his own.

He had been in a very calm state after killing them all, though that had fallen apart by now, so the plan on how to "redeem" himself came fairly easy..

Several monsters had been marked on Mangels journal, Cades would make "it" good by killing one of them for every one of the paladins that he had killed.

He would kill six of these supposedly powerful monsters.

Cades had already planned his whole journey, first he wanted to hunt a gigantic bird, it was closest to him and also had the smallest drawing in the book, although it was called "demon of the sky".

After that he would kill what appeared to be a snake and a gigantic sand golem.

The bird lived in a ravine, the snake, "demon of the lake", lived in a lake, seemingly coiled up at the bottom, and the sand golem, "demon of the forsaken", which seemed to be active in the same place were Cades would've been searching by now, had it not been for the avian male that he encountered.

After that he would hunt down three more, but he hadn't decided on the order.

There was a raven," demon of wisdom", a wyvern, "demon of the mountains" and a kind of giant eye with no title.

The names were probably known by all the people on this world, told in legends and cautious tales, but Cades didn't really care about that.

Cades picked them in this order, not because of who was closest to him, but, by which of these monsters were the closest to the city that he desperately wished to excuse himself to.

He was truly desperate to redeem himself, but he knew that it would never work fully, he had made the mistake, it was his fault.

That's what he had decided and now he was already at the site of the first monster, the "demon of the sky"

The monster was not an apex as Cades had expected it to be, no, the humongous bird was of the "lord" level, all be it barely.

It was 180 feet big, with hundreds of thousands tiny, light brown, sharp feathers covering its body.

The "demon" had four eyes all shining bright red.

It had a long, partially deformed beak, but, it still had teeth.

Said teeth were inside the pale yellowish orange beak and layered in multiple formations, sharp, yellow and, same as the beak, deformed as if it had never taken care of its hygiene.

Which it never had.

Cades had seen the monster cast a fire spell to roast one of its poor "snacks", which was also the time that he had found out about the fact that it was a "lord".

The goliath lived inside a nest, as birds did, but the nest was not made of twigs, it was made of huge trunks of the countless trees once surrounding the huge hole that the being resided in.

Cades had made his temporary residence inside the hole as well, he had made himself "home" in a small cavern on the side of the walls, hidden by a small tree, he watched surrounded the huge bird as it slept, as it ate, as it lived.

And he already had a plan on how to fight against the thing.

The plan consisted of three steps.

First of all he had killed a giant boar monster, this wasn't difficult at all.

The monster already laid besides him, huge, dark brown and ferocious, with the second step already having been completed as well.

This being the act of transforming the "bait" into a living bomb that would explode in the birds ugly face, which wasn't too difficult after Cades had spent a few hours artificing the corpse.

And the last step was to bait Bruna and as previously mentioned, have it explode in his face.

Now it was time to lay out the bait.

Cades carefully descended the humongous hole, about 600 feet high, with a circumference of 350 feet, while holding the "bait", a 20 feet tall, giant boar.

He knew that it would stay away for some time, the thing always hunted for food at this time, so he wasn't worried as he placed the bait in the centre of its nest and flew off once more, towards his small cavern on the rocky sides of the wall.

Cades sat right on the entrance of the cavern and looked at the bait, he planned to never take his eyes of it, if he failed he would most likely be killed.

The only reason that this was even going to work was that the bird wasn't on guard, it hadn't faced anything as powerful as itself, or even been wounded, for over a hundred years.

Not since the empire last sent heroes to take care of the "Demon of the sky".

But Cades didn't know about the last part, he only knew that the bird would be on guard and probably kill him if he failed with his endeavour.

After a few hours it came back, its majestic wings flapping slowly as the beast descended into the ancient crater.

As it descended and took notice of the bait, it slowly moved towards it, brought its huge head closer and was seemingly thinking about something.

Maybe it was thinking about wether or not it had killed this one.

But Cades had already been prepared for this very scenario, the bait was a monster that the demon killed all the time, to satisfy its own hunger, there would be nothing amiss with it laying around in its nest.

And then, shortly after noticing the bait, it bit into the flesh with his massive beak.

A deafening explosion occurred and the bird was thrown away while sending out a screech almost as deafening as the explosion itself.

It was time.

Cades quickly flew towards the now burning monster that was trying to fly outside the hole, into the familiar sky where it would be safe, or at least it thought so, but instead Cades followed the huge beast and readied himself for their clash.

The beast was blinded by the explosion, its face burned, parts of its beak melting and its teeth were shattered, but otherwise it was fine.

And then, Cades and the "Demon of the sky" finally began their clash amidst the clouds.