The Demon King is Unfathomable

Things went down the way Orktor anticipated.

There was only one thing he had misjudged—from the very start, the demon king had never intended to negotiate with them. That was why he provoked them time and time again so that they would lose their rationality.

It was too late by the time Orktor realized that, and it didn’t help his reaction was slower than his enemy too.

“Frost Blast!”

A cold blue light surged across the dark hall and accurately struck the center of the lizardman envoys’ formation.

Roan had started channeling this spell from the moment Arakdor pledged loyalty to him on behalf of the Weaving Shadow Nest. Ice element spells weren’t his field of specialty, but they were the most effective weapon against the fire-resistant, pierce-resistant lizardmen.

Their fear of coldness was one of the reasons they were called four-legged snakes.

Five lizardmen failed to dodge in time and were struck squarely by the cold blue light.

Explosions of frost followed, causing coldness to seep into the surroundings. The five lizardmen were turned into ice sculptures before they could let out a squeak.

Not only so, but the crypt spiders who were previously in the same situation as the lizardmen took this chance to add insult to injury.

Pshh!

Several streams of white turbid fluid flew at the lizardmen. They weren’t exactly useless, but the humiliation factor outweighed the damage dealt.

The Weaving Shadow Nest’s number one general, Arakdor, even shamelessly shouted as if to flaunt its minuscule contribution, “Demon King, hurry up and take them down! We will stall them for you!”

Roan couldn’t be bothered with that fellow. His attention was on the giant lizard who had escaped his initial attack.

‘This fellow’s level might just be slightly below mine!’

Orktor’s eyes reddened at the sight of his frozen clansmen. He regretted not having seen through the demon king’s ploy earlier, which resulted in them being caught off guard by this sudden assault.

Escape was out of the question. The Weaving Shadow Nest’s cowards had already dashed off to block the exits.

Knowing he was cornered, Orktor drew his scimitar and charged at Roan with a roar.

“Champion Blood!”

As if someone had pumped methanol into him, Orktor’s frozen blood began flowing at an accelerated pace, dispelling the coldness. His body began emanating a faint golden glow under the Dragon God’s blessing.

This was the power of ‘ki’!

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‘I guess these lizards aren’t just cosplaying as dragons; they have received the dragons’ inheritance too. That fellow’s instantaneous burst power might now be on par with Gold-tier. However, he’s too naive if he thinks that is enough to bring me down.’ R

Roan had maxed out his buffs before the negotiation.

“Go to hell! Execution!”

Orktor swung his charged-up scimitar at the unmoving demon king, unleashing an incredible force that sent the latter flying like a cannonball into the stone pillar. The stone pillar collapsed amidst puffs of dust.

Orktor smiled in glee.

‘That’s all the demon king amounts to.’

His delight only lasted two seconds.

‘He dodged? How is that possible?!’

His amber eyes swiftly darted across the room as he attempted to find the demon king concealed in the dust. What he saw instead were cackling skeleton soldiers rushing at him.

“Brothers, kill him!”

“Experience points! Experience points!”

Orktor sneered in disdain.

‘A paltry trick!’

He was just about to slice down the skeletons before him when he suddenly felt a pair of venomous eyes on him. Goosebumps crawled all over his body, as he felt strength swiftly receding from his body.

‘This—Soul Siphon?!’

Orktor hurriedly leaped backward to distance himself from the spellcaster, but as he rose into the air, he suddenly felt a premonition of imminent death.

‘The zombie!’

Orktor was horrified. He instinctively realized the zombie was waiting behind him.

He anxiously attempted to twist his body around, but it was impossible to pull it off when he was already in mid-air. He could only watch helplessly as he flew toward Bant, who was waiting with his greatsword.

“Oompf…”

Bant, who had been gathering his ki in his weapon, raised his head and swung his greatsword like a professional baseball hitter!

Psh!

The already chipped greatsword couldn’t withstand the force and shattered, but its broken blade plunged into Orktor’s back.

Warm blood splattered, further deepening the color of the already bloody hall.

Orktor didn’t even have time to utter his dying words. His body crashed into Bant and rolled a tumbled a couple of times across the floor before he breathed his last.

“I knew you would jump backward,” Roan smirked.

Soul Siphon could swiftly take down Copper-tier opponents, but it would take more time to incapacitate Steel-tier opponents. That being said, it was a perfect bait to goad the enemy into making a reckless move and revealing an opening.

It was in preparation for this attack that he didn’t call Bant over to protect him.

Behind the majestic stone pillar, Roan stowed away a mirror fragment with a smile. His partnership with Youyou was getting increasingly smooth. He merely needed to cast a gaze, and the latter would appear where he needed it to.

As for the players… they still needed more time.

Bant instinctively pounced on Orktor’s carcass to feast on it, but Roan flicked his wand and tightened his leash on Bant. Then, he chanted an incantation and released a green light that squarely struck Orktor’s profusely bleeding chest.

“Awaken, my servant.”

Orktor’s blood stopped spurting, and he slowly rose from the ground as an undead. With his claws, he grasped the shattered blade lodged in his chest, pulled it out, and dropped it on the ground.

Unlike Bant, he exuded potent killing intent—or maybe grudge was more apt—and it felt like he could go berserk at any moment.

Yet, Roan’s eyes lit up in delight.

“…Its soul is at Gold-tier?”

It was a jackpot!

Undead beings couldn’t train like the living, but necromancers had devised many ways to enhance their awakened puppets. In gist, the power ceiling of an undead was determined by its soul tier and the necromancer’s strength.

Bant, for instance, would be capped at Copper-tier unless Roan raised his soul tier.

Orktor, on the other hand, could display prowess on par with a Steel-tier with slight enhancements.

‘But why would a Gold-tier soul appear on the labyrinth’s first floor? It looks like many things have happened here during Lej Dracul’s reign, unbeknownst to the underworld…’

While Roan was reanimating the Drake Clan’s champion, Arakdor and the other envoys from the Weaving Shadow Nest laid respectfully before him.

Any doubt they had harbored in the Demon King’s strength had disappeared. Arakdor had nothing but loyalty left for the Demon King.

The players wanted to hack up the spiders too, but their bodies froze in place as soon as the thought surfaced in their minds.

“Argh, isn’t this a boss fight? Why can’t I move again?!”

“Skip! Fastforward! I want to go on a killing spree! I want a river of blood!”

“Let’s sacrifice these spiders to the gods!”

Roan nearly burst into laughter upon hearing the players’ grumbling. “Enough. You will have your chance in the future, but now is not the time.”

The skeletons cackled in response.

“Ooooooh!”

“The Demon King is looking at me! He’s looking at me!”

“Eh? Is the NPC responding to us?”

Roan: “…”

It was not as if he had never played games before, but he was struggling to comprehend how these people were wired.

“Is it because times have changed?’

Roan leisurely made his way up to the five ice sculptures, lift his wand, and lightly tapped them. The ice sculptures shattered together with the lizardmen inside.

“Youyou, get some players to deliver these remains to the lizardmen once the cutscene ends. War has already begun.”

This declaration revved up the deceptively gentle but actually chaotic Youyou. “Yes, Demon King!”

Once he was done dealing with the lizardmen, Roan turned to Arakdor and slowly addressed him in the underworld’s tongue, “I come to this land bearing His Majesty Demon God’s edict to clean up Lej Dracul’s mess. Let’s talk about your loyalty.”

“Please order us as you deem fit, esteemed Demon King! There might be misunderstandings between us in the past, but our loyalty is unquestionable!” Arakdor earnestly replied.

Roan didn’t stand on ceremony and ordered in an authoritative voice, “Give me a thousand adult ‘Excavators’ and ‘Weavers’ to expand my domain and craft equipment. Add in another thousand ‘Hunter’ eggs on top of that to serve my army. Relay my demands to your leader. If he provides me with what I want, I’ll permit the Weaving Shadow Nest’s existence in my labyrinth.

“Also, my servants hunger for blood. They will indiscriminately attack all living beings in certain sections of the labyrinth. I’ll order them to avoid your nest, but I advise you to offer them tribute outside your nest, such as the crypt spiders from other tribes.”

It was the obligation of all labyrinth monsters to rally under the Demon King, but Arakdor still shuddered after hearing Roan’s greedy demands.

“Yes, Demon King…” Arakdor meekly replied.

Under the Demon King’s watchful eyes, he hurriedly departed with his subordinates.

After seeing the Weaving Shadow Nest’s envoys off, Roan issued more orders to Youyou, “Youyou, mark those envoys with green names. Don’t let the players cause them any trouble. Also, begin making preparations for update a.0.4. Players will get to choose between ‘insect’ and ‘skeleton’ when they first access the game.”

Two conditions had to be fulfilled in order to place a soul into a body—the body had to be a soul container and hadn’t been occupied by a fully-developed soul yet.

Mature crypt spiders and the adventurers he had imprisoned in stone cells couldn’t serve as soul containers. There were souls occupying those bodies, and those bodies had already fully adapted to the souls in them.

Stuffing a foreign soul into those bodies was analogous to pumping Type A blood into a body filled with Type B blood. There were methods to pull it off such as employing a Soul Devouring Ritual, but those came with significant side effects.

The most reasonable option was to place the soul of players who wanted to become crypt spiders in spider eggs, then hasten the incubation of the eggs using faith.

In the future, this process could be automated through the use of an altar.

It was not uncommon for underworld acolytes to ‘summon’ adult crypt spiders from spider eggs using altars, and that was how the labyrinth’s crypt spider population got so big in the first place.

“Understood!” Youyou replied with a cheeky grin.

Following that, Roan checked his character page and saw that he had experience points equivalent to a hundred crypt spiders.

On top of that, he noticed that his daily faith revenue had finally outgrown his daily faith expenditure!