Chapter 38
Demon King Castle.
Eight fox-kin girls presented huge plates of tea and fruits.
"Master!"
"Your tea."
"We've prepared some fruits and desserts for you."
Although the fox-kin girls were a bit intimidated to face the mighty looking master of theirs, the greater part of them was impressed and worshipful.
They were originally the villagers of the fox-kin village. After Zhang Nu conquered the Bloodhoof Tribe, they were then relocated to Darkness Valley. Currently, they are quite satisfied with their new life here.
This world is one that follows the law of the jungle.
For the weak, there's nothing more important to them than a sense of security.
Zhang Nu had taken in a total of 105 fox-kin.
Fox-kin might be weak, but they're low maintenance. He picked out 30 of the young and pretty girls among them and promoted them to servants, with permission to work in the Castle.
He is a great Demon King after all, so it's only natural that he should have personal servants attending to his every whim, right?
Draconians and minotaurs with their large bodies and rough appearances might be fine for rough labor, but having them take care of detailed housework is just a disaster waiting to happen.
Now, things are much better.
With a squad of maids, the Demon King Castle looked a good deal less gloomy.
Zhang Nu also made sure to take care of all the other fox-kin as well. Every race has their own natural talents and specializations. Fox-kin might be on the weak side when it comes to combat, and they're also no good at farming or production, but they do have some talents when it comes to cooking and brewing.
Zhang Nu has a very large appetite, so he just wound up setting up 30 fox-kin to work exclusively as his chefs.
Fox-kins are also much more intelligent than goblins and minotaurs. As the territory expands more and more, he will end up needing administrators and clerks.
This particular great Demon King's days are really getting better and better.
At this moment, messages were constantly popping up in his player menu.
[You've slain a vampire bat soldier. Gold +7!]
[You've slain a vampire bat soldier. Gold +7!]
[You've slain a vampire bat soldier. Gold +7!]
[...]
"Eh?"
"Has it begun?"
"It looks like everything's going well!"
Zhang Nu knew that the Hero girl had already located the Demon King's Nest.
Although Demon Kings don't get any special rewards from killing other Demon Kings, they do get the basic gold rewards. It's no different from killing wild monsters.
This particular Demon King isn't all that strong.
Even so, he still has about 800 or so minor minions.
Doing some quick math, this will end up earning him about 6,000 or so gold. It's a pretty good haul as far as it goes.
As for that Demon King himself, there's no real point in monitoring things any further.
Zhang Nu knew that the Demon King is definitely going to die.
Thus, he instead shifted his attention onto his territory instead.
The current status of the territory is as follows:
Important structures: Demon King Castle, MInotaur Camp, Dark Prison, Tower of Fog, Towers of Grudges.
Total population: 3200 units.
1155 of them are his racial units.
In detail: 815 draconian laborers, 320 draconian soldiers, 10 draconian high soldiers, and 10 draconian battlemages.
The remaining 2045 are of the other races.
In detail: 1000 skeleton soldiers, 100 skeleton commanders, 50 skeleton mages, 464 minotaurs, 10 minotaur priests, 316 goblins, and 105 fox-kin.
Current gold: Around 32k.
Currently average daily income: Around 20k gold. Of those, the vast majority came from products of the goblin farms.
...
At a glance, the territory is already pretty strong.
If things keep on developing at his speed, then even the major factions of the Chaos Forest will have a hard time dealing with the threat posed by him before long.
Of course, if Zhang Nu wants to match himself up against major nations or great empires, that's not something that can happen very soon.
However, if those top superpowers wanted to deal with Zhang Nu, then that's also a very costly matter for them as well.
It's because the Darkness Valley is deep within the Chaos Forest.
No matter how strong those nation level armies might be, they'd still have a very hard time going through all the countless rough terrain, hostile environments, and restless natives that they would have to in order to reach Zhang Nu.
Just the supply and costs would be terrifying to behold.
Thus, Zhang Nu isn't actually worried about any threat that they might pose.
What he needs to do now is just to continue developing and expanding. To make his Demon King Army even stronger and to start conquering the nearby factions step by step.
He doesn't have that many elites within his main army, so Zhang Nu spent 10k gold and directly leveled up 10 soldiers to high soldiers.
Then, he spent 1k gold to add 200 more laborers before then spending 10k gold to raise those 200 laborers to high laborers.
Zhang Nu did a quick comparison.
[Draconian Laborer]. Level 1 Normal unit. 15 HP, 15 MP, 1 Strength, 1 Constitution, 1 Agility, 1 Will. Construction lv2, Collection lv2, Smithing lv1, Hunting lv1, Crafting lv1.
[High Draconian Laborer]. Level 2 Normal unit. 25 HP, 25 MP, 4 Strength, 4 Constitution, 4 Agility, 4 Will. Construction lv4, Collection lv3, Smithing lv3, Hunting lv2, Crafting lv2.
High laborers have their construction skill up to level 4.
This makes them more capable of building more complicated structures.
High laborers' smithing skills rose from level 1 to level 3. This is equivalent to very strong smithing techniques, allowing them to create high quality equipment.
The total laborer numbers have finally broken 1000.
These kinds of basic production units are extremely important.
Although they can't directly construct structures with special abilities like the House of Skeletons, Minotaur Camp, or Towers of Grudges, the territory also needs far more than just those structures.
A large number of basic structures also have great effects for developing the territory.
Besides that, draconian laborers are also responsible for massive amounts of material transport, wood chopping, collection, and crafting work, so he can't skim on them.
He had spent a huge portion of his gold again.
Although his territory does have a high daily income and Zhang Nu himself is definitely one of the Demon Kings with the highest income among them all, it's still not quite enough for the territory's development. Thus, he needs to continue increasing his financial income.
At that moment, a draconian came with a report.
"My lord!"
"The herbal fields are ready for harvest!"
"The goblin slaves don't know how they should deal with such valuable herbs though!"