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Chapter 25: Su Yan and Zhao Lei

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 lesast 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. (T/N: 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 Lian 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.

Comments 14

  1. Offline
    Solo_k
    + 03 -
    Begon Thott!
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  2. Offline
    DesolateRipper
    + 26 -
    Yes this seems like it will not get interesting for me, how unfortunate.
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  3. Online Offline
    FiltyIncognito
    + 133 -
    Egh, MC falling prey to the mistake of idle army upkeep, the cost of maintaining large standing armies with nothing profitable to do.

    He's completely ignoring the fact that he can mass summon his army instantly. And by doing so ignores a huge advantage:

    The basic skeleton costs 3 gold and doesn't seem much more useful than a small mobile log. On the other hand, his drak workers are several times more powerful and intelligent and only 5 gold. Only 66% more.

    What he should be doing is have some squads of skeletons to patrol the areas outside his territory so the MC gets notifications of approaching or nearby enemies, which will give him time to scout and prepare. If an army is needed he can just summon drak workers and ambush the enemy in the canyon.

    Use fresh drak workers so he isn't sacrificing experienced craftsmen as meat shields, and use the oldest and most experienced drak warriors so they can accumulate experience. The mix also makes it hard to distinguish the warriors in battle, making them all the more effective.

    Another big bonus is that he can equip the workers with gear. Boulders to drop in the canyon, sharp rocks or simple wood javelins to throw and break the charge of an enemy. Thick wooden shields or palisades. Bushes to make it harder to aim at vitals or camouflage themselves for an ambush. And once he gets metal weapons he'll be able to reuse most of then after the battle.

    They could even build some simple earthen defenses to get some terrain advantages, if they have the time.
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    1. Offline
      jackdaw
      jackdaw
      + 50 -
      -_-
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    2. Online Offline
      Koroik
      + 10 -
      Falo todo cara é exatamente isso que eu Tava pensando
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    3. Offline
      meh
      meh
      + 60 -
      i think you need to chill first off I'm pretty sure the skeletons aren't smart enough to patrol anything second I'm pretty sure experience wise all the summons are basically set to be the same and third his people aren't necessarily idle just because it isn't explained every time doesn't mean they do nothing it was explained previously that his soldiers guard and patrol the area while the skeletons chop wood and such while his labor draks build houses and hunt so it's likely that they're still doing exactly that just on a larger scale since they have more workforce now
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    4. Offline
      LollipoPReapeR
      + 60 -
      …I think you are expecting too much tactical and strategic thinking from these authors. These kind of novels are usually very low level. Just having this level of consistency is already pretty good. Be happy MC isn’t too retarded and keep reading.
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      1. Online Offline
        FiltyIncognito
        + 13 -
        I agree with your argument, but there's no classifications or intro references for such things. How do I set my expectations? If I followed what you seem to be putting down, I should expect bottom-of-the-barrel for any book I pick up... in which case I wouldn't ever pick up another book for the rest of my life.

        But that's not really the issue. I have no problem with authors with less knowledge who write at their level, but "Fake it to you make it" doesn't work in the writing industry except with audiences who just don't know any better... which still ain't a stellar move because that's one of society's sources of misinformation and information pollution.

        The problem is the author taking on subjects they have no business writing about. Good authors research their material till they have something worth reading about, or constrain themselves to their level.

        I learned about upkeep from video games in grade school. If a mature book can't keep up with a child... well someone damn well better write about to it to keep others from wasting their time.

        Plus it's also a learning experience when polite, constructive discourse happens. Others might add something interesting or inform me of a mistake I made. Or I and a fellow frustrated stranger might have a feelgood moment of commiseration.... though far more likely I'll just get an upvote and be a little happy I did something at least a little positive for another bookworm.
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        1. Offline
          LollipoPReapeR
          + 20 -
          No I completely agree, but the thing is I see novels like this that involve the ‘appraisal skill’ and drastically lower the bar of my expectations (even lower than normal Chinese fics).

          Honestly I don’t expect to stay here longer than maybe another 100 or chapters. By then it’s likely the logic loopholes and inconsistencies will pile up to an unignorable level. Until then, I’ll make do with the low level numbers go brrrrrr mentality to pass the time.

          TLDR; don’t overthink it, otherwise the frustration will just ruin things for you. If not, then the story isn’t for you as I honestly don’t see things get better.
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    5. Offline
      Mavendow
      + 00 -
      This isn't a game where he's summoning fixed characters that can never grow. This is his real world, now, so presumably his units can gain experience and grow.

      He absolutely SHOULD have a standing army. And make them train regularly, too.
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  4. Offline
    Nas
    Nas
    + 130 -
    Well I can already guess that this Su Yan will be kept alive by the MC so he can use her for this “useful ability” she has.

    I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it. ehh
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  5. Offline
    Strange Dark
    + 11 -
    This hero and all other heros are courting death
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  6. Offline
    kshatria
    + 20 -
    Is there no nine tailed fox?
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  7. Offline
    skuxxman
    + 141 -
    I know it isn't gonna happen but I wish the mc would just kill them all
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