Chapter 25
The next day, the giga potatoes are about ready for harvest again.
Due to the fact that the number of fields in use has increased, the potato harvest this time is more than double what they were previously.
After building the Demon King Castle, leveling up the House of Bones, and setting up the five Towers of Grudges, Zhang Nu's gold not only didn't decrease, but is increasing rapidly instead.
There are two main sources of income.
One is his loot from battle and the other is his food sales.
If one were to put aside the other rewards and simply count the raw gold income, then the food sales are the biggest source of income. Currently, the total income up until now is nearly 40,000 gold.
Plus, the spirit fields still aren't being fully utilized yet.
In the future, his agricultural activity will still expand even further.
Also, other Demon Kings are also quickly developing, so the trading market is still growing, with great potential still ahead of it. Thus, it's more than good enough to act as a central pillar for his income.
Right now, his gold income is quite healthy, his economic situation is great and he has at least 30,000 gold to freely spend as he likes.
Now that he basically has a money tree in the form of his farms, there's no need to calculate everything out carefully. Thus, he immediately made a major expansion of his undead army.
50 skeleton mages at a cost of 150 gold per, for 7,500 gold total!
100 skeleton commanders at 100 gold per, for 10,000 gold total!
900 skeleton soldiers at only 3 gold per, for 2,700 gold total!
Zhang Nu already has 100 skeleton soldiers to begin with.
This way, his undead army is completely maxed out.
It's a shockingly huge army for the current period.
With this army, the Towers of Grudges, and the Demon King Castle, the Darkness Valley's defenses against any invasion attempt has become more and more formidable.
After the undead army was maxed out, Zhang Nu spent another 10k gold to summon 100 draconian soldiers.
Adding in the 100 soldiers already present, he currently has an army of 200 draconian soldiers.
Although there are quite a lot of advantages to the undead army, their disadvantages are also extremely obvious.
Their biggest advantage is their cheapness. Skeleton soldiers only cost 3 gold each, making them even cheaper than draconian laborers. Plus, their upkeep cost is also very low, given that they don't need to eat or drink.
Their disadvantage is that low level undeads are mindless. They have basically no production capabilities and are unable to follow even slightly complex orders. They also lack the capacity for independent thought, and so they're unable to adapt to changing circumstances.
Plus, while undeads have low upkeep, it doesn't mean that they lack any upkeep costs.
They need to go back to the House of Skeletons every set time period to recharge. Now that the undead army has been maxed out, the house of Skeletons now has a daily upkeep cost of several hundred gold.
As mentioned already, while the undead army is quite useful and is very suitable to act as a main combat force to soak up damages, Zhang Nu can't just completely rely on the undead army on its own.
The draconian army is the real core of his forces, with a lot of room to grow in the future at that.
After the round of summoning was done, the population of the territory had increased by a lot.
Now, there are a total of 2390 units.
1150 undead, 920 draconians, and 319 goblins. (Plus himself for 1 more)
There are four core constructs: The Demon King Castle, the House of Skeletons, the Towers of Grudges, and the goblin farms.
His Demon King enterprise is starting to take shape.
Such an enormous amount of growth in just half a month shows just how much potential Demon King has.
...
At the same time.
There's a small fox-kin village near the Darkness Valley.
Fox-kin are a common intelligent race. They're highly intelligent but low in strength. Their general place in the food chain is near the bottom, not much better than goblins. They can even be said to be even worse off in some ways.
It's because most fox-kin girls are quite beautiful.
They tend to be very close to the continent's standards of beauty.
For slave traders, hunting fox-kin is a low risk, high reward business.
Su Yan isn't very lucky.
She ended up a normal fox-kin.
She's the only Hero of that nameless village.
She had thought that she would have the chance to act like the protagonist of some novel and lead her village, defeat monsters to level up, hunt down and kill Demon Kings, and then eventually rise to the top of the world. However, she then got a heavy dose of reality fed to her.
The village was conquered.
A lot of the villagers were slaughtered.
She and the other lucky survivors were taken prisoner.
It's one thing if it was just that. This place basically follows the law of the jungle after all. However, what really made Su Yan mad is the fact that the main culprit behind the sacking of her village is another Hero.
"Su Yan."
"Have you properly thought it through yet?"
"You don't have much more time to think about it."
The minotaur chief Zhao Lei oppressively questioned her.
Zhao Lei is the chief of the Bloodhoof Tribe. This really is a one in a million stroke of luck for him.
He started with a massive advantage incomparable to other Heroes.
Before him, Su Yan is only a minor character.
If not for the fact that Su Yan's Talent is rather special, making her possibly useful in the future, and the fact that she's a top class beauty for him to ogle, Zhao Lei wouldn't have bothered to try to recruit her.
Su Yan angrily retorted, "We're both Hero players, but rather than attacking Demon Kings, you've instead sacked my village! Don't you think that you've gone too far?"
Zhao Lei simply laughed at that.
"It's only natural for the weak to obey the strong!"
"I'm already level 2. Plus, I lead over a thousand minotaurs!"
"What right do you have to stand as an equal to me? Right now, you only have two choices. Either submit or die along with these fox-kin!"
Zhao Lei gave his ultimatum.
Su Yan was shocked.
He's already level 2?
Even though she's still angry and holding a grudge, right now, she has no choice but to lower her head. All she can do is obey for now while trying to find a chance to escape later.
Zhao Lei was quite satisfied.
In reality, his business had failed and he was left with nothing.
However, in this world, he has a powerful body. Plus, he leads what's basically the strongest faction in the nearby area, so he could be said to be able to lord over all that he surveys.
Zhao Lei plans to swallow up all the nearby villages and tribes, furiously expand his faction, while at the same time recruiting more Heroes as his underlings. Finally, he'll end up as a major overlord over a portion of the Forest of Chaos.
Then, just as he got back to his tribal grounds in satisfaction, a sudden bit of bad news made him break out in a rage.