Chapter 45: Building a City
After the completion of the pouring of mercury into the magic formation, Xeron appeared at the crater.
He stood at the edge of the magic formation as his hands began to glow, and his mouth changed something softly. After a while, the magic formation started to glimmer.
Xeron suddenly stomped his demon’s hoof onto the ground. A loud noise reverberated, and the entire volcano began to shake.
Like a major earthquake, the entire mountain was shaking, and many demons fell to the ground.
The magic formation that Xeron had them fill was actually an amplifying formation. He used the effect of this amplification and cast the Earthquake spell, letting the magic penetrate to the bottom of the volcano.
“Retreat!” Xeron ordered. The demons gathered on the volcano ran for their lives. Even though they had lived in a world with volcanoes and magma, it did not mean that demons were not afraid of a volcanic eruption. On the contrary, demons most feared volcanic eruptions because they clearly knew the destructive power of volcanic eruptions.
There were approximately two hundred demons that Xeron had summoned. Shortly after these demons fled for their lives, the volcano, which had been affected by the seismic activity, reached its critical point and made a deafening roar before erupting.
Thick black smoke containing volcanic ash billowed into the sky from the crater. Due to the immense force of the volcanic eruption, numerous large and small burning stones spewed out of the volcano and flew in all directions like fairies scattering flowers. The sight was beautiful and terrifying. With the eruption, hot lava spilled out from the crater. The streams of fiery hot lava flowed down the volcano and burned all the trees and bushes along the way. Some little animals did not escape in time and perished in the flowing lava…
The volcanic eruption took two hours before subsiding. But within a five-kilometer radius of the volcano was all scorched earth, and not an inch of gra.s.s was left. Some of the lava had already begun to cool, turning into black ground, while some of it was still scorching hot and emitting dark red light and smoke.
Xeron looked at his masterpiece with pride and laughed wildly. He was very satisfied with the scorched land and thought that he could finally start building a city.
Yes, the purpose of detonating the volcano was to build an environment suitable to live in for demons. Scenic greenery and water did not look demonic at all. Demons still loved these kinds of environments full of sulfuric air…
Under Xeron’s berating, the two hundred-odd low-level demons, including Roy, began to work. They found large rocks and leveled the ground as much as possible while the lava was still soft to build the foundation. After laying the foundation, they began building the city…
Roy did not take part in the building this time. He brought Fat Tiger and became the supervisor of these demons. With the city blueprint and Xeron’s leather whip in hand, he supervised these low-level demons to build according to the plan.
These demons were not construction worker material, so Roy did not have it easy supervising them and could not take his eyes off their work. Otherwise, they would stack the walls like a pile of instant noodles in disarray.
Moreover, the demons lacked equipment. What they built was made of nothing but stone and wood, and such structures were unreliable and p.r.o.ne to collapse. But the demons had ideas too. As they were near a volcano, they sent some demons to obtain lava and waited for it to cool before pouring it onto the structures to fill the gaps and strengthen the walls.
As the city gradually took shape, Xeron brought new blueprints and got the demons to begin building their own living quarters.
To put it bluntly, these were their nests. Every type of demon had their preferred nest styles. After construction, the demons spontaneously sorted themselves and moved into them. Xeron once again engraved summoning formations among these nests and continued to summon the same types of demons into this world.
For example, in the demon kennels used to house h.e.l.lhounds, Xeron would only summon h.e.l.lhounds when he was among the kennels. Every time he summoned a new batch, he would sign a contract with these h.e.l.lhounds and let them stay in these demon kennels.
During this period, Roy had been secretly observing Xeron’s actions. He realized that the demons that Xeron summoned were typically from a few variants. It was likely because he needed similar types of demons in the same battalion, so he did not summon demons that were too complicated. And every time Xeron summoned demons, he could accurately get what he wanted.
Roy observed for a while before understanding the trick to it. Xeron seemed to understand clearly what each demon liked. For example, when he wanted to summon the little demons, he added the powdered eggsh.e.l.ls of birds and worms into fresh blood as offerings to modify the scent of the blood.
Every time he used this type of offering, he could summon a large number of little demons. These little demons were naturally those that had not been born long and had just entered the upper Abyss. Perhaps the smell of the powdered eggsh.e.l.ls in the blood reminded them of the times that they just hatched and ate their demon eggsh.e.l.ls, so they rushed to be teleported into this world.
Once summoned, their fates were sealed. How much combat strength could these newborn little demons have? Xeron summoned them to increase the number of construction workers and also to prepare cannon fodder for the fighting to come.
In addition to summoning these little demons, there was also the method to summon h.e.l.lhounds—adding the urine of a griffon to blood. Xeron had caught some wild griffons and reared them. When he mixed the griffin urine into the blood, the temptation to h.e.l.lhounds was absolutely astounding!
This situation reminded Roy of his past life when he learned how to fish, using different bait for various types of fish…
When Roy was responding to the summon at the Gate of the Abyss, he smelled this stench that was griffon urine mixed with blood. He was wondering why the b.l.o.o.d.y smell was strange, but little did he know that Xeron was using this method to lure h.e.l.lhounds. If not for his ignorance, he would not have entered mistakenly… The demon summoning ritual was such. Because you were unable to see what it was like on the other end of the Gates of the Abyss, there was no way to avoid risk. Once you encountered this kind of summoning trap, you could only rely on your strength to get out of trouble.
Only a demon would best understand a demon. It was unknown how long this high-rank demon, Xeron, had lived. When he felt he needed certain types of demons, he had the means to summon them. The Abyss was so vast that no one had any idea how many demons were living in it. Even with the complicated bloodlines among low-rank demons, with all sorts of different looks, it was not difficult to find many of the same kind among them.
And without exception, he enslaved all the demons he summoned. In order to deal with the upcoming war, Xeron could not let these summoned demons return easily. Here, Xeron was a demon lord, and the summoned demons were his people. Since Xeron blocked their way home, the demons could only let him get what he wanted…
Of course, there were demons like Roy that did not cooperate after being summoned and resisted. However, after being whipped, they gave in, signed the contract, and obediently worked for Xeron.
Roy witnessed this and turned a blind eye to it, having no sympathy for them. Instead, he knew that Xeron’s actions were consistent with demon behavior.
There was never any warmth between demons. Apart from killing, it was using. Only on a few occasions were their ideas similar. Even if high-level demons valued bloodline, it was only for those in the same rank. It was normal for the high-level ones to treat the low-level ones like slaves and beat them. Xeron summoning demons to fight for him cost almost nothing, but the return was a large number of souls. With such a high rate of return, let alone demons, even human capitalists would come rus.h.i.+ng.
With the pa.s.sing of time, this demon city gradually grew, and at this moment, two high-rank demons appeared to meet Xeron…
These two high-rank demons came riding on nightmare horses and brought with them a small demon army. These nightmare warhorses were temperamental, and their bodies were covered in s.h.i.+ny, black, hardened skin. They had a single demon horn on their heads and four hoofs burning with flames, leaving a trail of burnt prints wherever they went…
These nightmare warhorses were also demons and not monsters. Because they were intelligent, they were a kind of middle-rank demon. Many high-rank demons liked to enslave these nightmare warhorses to serve as mounts.
Both the high-rank demons wore cloaks and hid their looks. After entering the demon city, they began talking with Xeron in the interior hall. Roy, this elite demon, had been serving as Xeron’s deputy since he had a higher intelligence. So when the three high-rank demons were speaking, Roy, who was waiting outside the hall, easily heard their conversation…