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Daily Expenditure: 100】

Upgrading a mortal soul to Iron-tier cost 100 faith.

This expenditure would have pained Roan back when his faith was still in the three digits, but he was not the man he used to be!

Thanks to a certain plump rat, he was now rich in faith. He would have no trouble upgrading all 100 players in his server to Iron-tier.

As for upgrading his own soul tier, he was in no rush at the moment.

It cost 100,000 faith to raise his soul from Steel-tier to Platinum-tier, which was ten times more than before. That was an astronomical sum to the current him. Rather than stockpiling his faith for a distant future, he would rather use it to upgrade the more skilled players.

Besides, he had just advanced to Steel-tier, and it would take time before he hit his level cap. He was in no rush to raise his level cap at the moment.

Soul tier only determined the upper limit of one’s transcendent powers; it wouldn’t raise one’s current strength.

“…I can’t keep holing up in that cavern. I need to find ways to gain more worshipers.”

‘Let’s hope Jack can surprise me.’

While Roan was in thought, the other players in the demon king domain couldn’t help but stare at him. More specifically, they were staring at the person following him, Sara!

Her cute face and delicate frame spurred squeals of adoration. Her twitching cat ears made the green soulfire in the skeleton soldiers’ eyes flare intensely.

‘What’s going on?! A new NPC?!”

Seeing he had the players’ attention, Roan cleared his throat and got straight to the point, “Subjects of Necropolis, I am going to make an announcement. Necropolis’ first merchant shall open today, and we only accept hell coins as currency…”

The mining shaft was filled with the sound of clicking bones before Roan could finish his piece.

“Ooooooo!”

“Nekomimi!!! Nekomimi!!!”

“The dog developers totally get me!”

“Mine! MINEEEEEE!!! (Shrieks)”

“So cute!!!”

“Damn it, I want to rub myself against her!”

“Can I touch her ears? I can clean my hands first!”

The sudden encirclement of noisy skeleton soldiers frightened Sara so much that her fur stood up, and she let out a guttural growl. She might have lashed out if not for Roan standing next to her.

“Silence!”

Black streaks appeared on Roan’s face. He hadn’t expected the players to be such good-for-nothings. He was forced to invoke his authority to suspend the players’ movements, forcing them to cool down.

‘Where are all the reliable players? Are they playing another game?’

Roan was so abruptly interrupted that he didn’t even know where to continue from.

“Anyway, she is a subject of the demon king domain too, just like the rest of you. I won’t allow my subjects to harm one another. I’ll be keeping an eye here. If anyone bullies her, buys items without paying, or attempts to steal my treasures… I’ll make him regret coming to this world.” �

‘Good.’

Roan was satisfied with his performance. He thought he managed to bring out a boss’ flair despite his last-minute improvisation.

His only regret was that none of the players had their attention on him…

The adventurers imprisoned in the corner of the demon king domain looked over. They had no idea what the demon king had just said, but they clearly felt the preferential treatment.

Chris’ envy was spilling out. She tightly gripped the prison bars as she spat venomously, “Hah… That’s how men are like. They treat a woman differently just because they look a bit cuter.”

Lakeson, who was sitting against the wall with crossed arms, glanced at Chris as he muttered, “Are you sure that’s all?”

He meant to say they had lost fair and square, and there was nothing to grumble about.

Little did he know that he had stomped on Chris’ sore spots, prompting the latter to direct her venomous glare at him.

“What do you mean by that?! Are you saying I have no charm? I should gouge your eyes out and shove it down your throat!” Chris snapped.

Lakeson was rendered speechless. He wisely chose not to retort against that.

Meanwhile, Amu had been quietly staring at the demon king ever since the latter appeared, his fearful eyes tinged with expectation as if he was hoping for a reward.

Hugo was huddled up in the corner as usual, his hands embracing his head. He only occasionally looked up to scan his surroundings or look at his comrades.

‘They are mad… They have all gone mad!’

As the only normal person here, he had no idea how long more he could last here.

…

After the CG cutscene ended, Roan placed the ‘No feeding’ wooden board next to the store before dragging Sara behind the stone counter to instruct her about her job.

Such as not eating food offered by the players, how to tell if someone didn’t pay, what to do if someone asked a question she didn’t know how to respond to, or how to call Youyou for help if someone harassed her.

Most players were still poor at this stage of the game; their combined asset couldn’t even purchase a steel dagger, which cost 20,000 hell coins.

Sara’s work shouldn’t be too busy yet. It was a good chance for her to get familiarized with her work station.

Things happened as Roan expected.

When the players saw the list of goods, they blurted out ‘It’s a scam!’.

“Bloody hell! A normal one-handed steel sword costs 60,000?!”

“Wow. This is as scummy as Mount & Blade II.”

“Those greedy bastards!”

“Damn it! I might as well smith my own weapons!”

The skeletons’ outrage terrified Sara. She anxiously looked around for Roan, but the latter had already darted away.

All of a sudden, she recalled what Roan told her before he left. She hesitated for a long time before mustering the courage to squeeze out an embarrassing noise.

“Meow…”

The outraged skeletons instantly stiffened up and quietened down.

Sara blinked her eyes in confusion. ‘Is this some kind of spell?’

The silence lasted two seconds before the skeletons broke into a second uproar.

“UWAAAAAA!”

“Again! Again!”

“Louder! I didn’t hear it!”

Their clacking jaws sounded like firecrackers. These skeleton soldiers looked even more ardent than the zealots.

Just then, a skeleton soldier broke free from the crowd and charged at the store counter.

“Brothers, I can’t take it anymore! Who cares if the Demon King is watching? For the catgirl, I shall—”

A green light struck his head before he could finish his words.

His transparent soul was blasted out of his body, and it was forcefully dragged over and bound to the demon king domain’s core.

Orcknight: “Goddamnit! Why is it that punishment again?! What the hell did I do wrong?!”

Twilight looked at him with eyes dripping with disdain, “You don’t know what you did wrong? Can’t you see the frightened look on that poor NPC’s face?”

Dogshit cackled loudly. “It’s you again! Why are you always the one sweeping the landmines?”

Orcknight looked at the imprisonment duration and howled like a pig in an abattoir. “Have mercy on this little one, Demon King! I won’t dare to do it again! Please let me out!”

It was so embarrassing that Minowarrior pretended not to know him and quietly walked away.

…

Pitiful howls echoed in the mining shafts, adding an air of melancholia to Necropolis.

As much as Roan pitied Orcknight’s plight, he didn’t have the time to deal with him as he had more important matters at hand.

His earlier test showed that players weren’t the only ones who could earn experience points by hunting monsters; he, the demon king, could do the same too!

Furthermore, he could earn far more experience points from farming monsters than meditating!

Back when he was in the Demon King Academy, Egor or someone else had once told him the frontline was a good place for one to grow stronger despite the frighteningly high casualty rate. Most demons who survived a battle would grow to some extent.

Quite a few demons who massacred a village or a city evolved into terrifying entities.

The academic explanation for this phenomenon was that their survival instincts could have awakened their latent potential. On top of that, the act of massacre could have the additional effect of pleasing Demon God Bayeris, thus unknowingly triggering some sort of ritual.

But Linte Isaac’s system had a cruel and stone-cold answer to that question.

A soul entity simply grew when they murdered another soul entity.

This phenomenon had nothing to do with faith. It was just a fundamental law of this world. Similar to how a god could siphon another god’s faith by murdering them, a mortal could steal another mortal’s transcendent powers by killing them!

It was just that the stolen power tended to be disproportionately smaller, and the growth wouldn’t be realized until the individual ‘leveled up’, so this phenomenon mostly went unnoticed.

Even when someone noticed it, they often attributed it to another reason, such as a sudden epiphany from overcoming a life-and-death battle or the awakening of one’s latent potential, so on and so forth.

In actuality, it was just one party becoming another party’s experience pack.

Roan thought that since his transmigrator senior was able to arrive at this truth, it was unlikely that Saint Sisto or Demon God Beyeris were oblivious to it… The more likely explanation was that they had both chosen to obscure this truth behind religious teaching.

It was not too difficult to guess why they chose to do so.

From the perspective of a fief lord or a knight, rather than risking their lives slaying demons on the battlefield, there was a much safer way for them to grow—they could just hunt the weaklings within their ranks instead.

With their authority and influence, as long as they didn’t go overboard, they could easily get away with that.

It was the same for the underworld too.

In the first place, the underworld was a place where the strong reigned over the weak. If the demons were to ever learn that there was such a convenient way to grow stronger, the high demons would probably massacre half of their subordinate lower demons right away.

Societal order would immediately unravel.

Neither Saint Sisto nor the Demon God would want to see that.

That was why they used all means to restrain the god elects and powerful figures in their ranks, be it through issuing divine edicts, issuing commandments, or reinforcing their divine influence.

It was as if the world was a bonsai plant they were tending to. They didn’t hesitate to snip away humans or demons who defied their will.

In a way, Roan was a beneficiary of that.

If the Demon Capital’s demons recklessly used their transcendent powers without restraints, there was no way a human like him could live to adulthood. Putting all things aside, he would have likely succumbed to Professor Lilith.

It was also not hard to guess why Linte Isaac was telling him this piece of information.

This was indeed the most efficient path. The fastest way to ‘clear’ this otherworld was to kill, kill, and kill.

The fastest way to raise his strength was to kill through physical means. The fastest way to raise his psyche was to kill through spells… The stronger the opponent, the more experience points he could gain from the other party.

Such a rate of growth far exceeded that of training and meditation.

It was as if the experience system was encouraging chaos rather than order.

Maybe the reason he couldn’t select players via the Calamity system was because the system already picked chaos-inclined players over neutral- and order-inclined players.

As the Machine God said from the very start, ‘Let this foolish world burn!’

He wasn’t joking about it. He intended to unleash a true calamity upon this world!

That being said, Roan was not a puppet for others to maneuver. Linte might have his plans, but Roan had his thoughts too.

But it was still too early to talk about these.

No matter what Roan wanted to do, the priority at hand was to become stronger.

In contrast to the relatively dangerous Thunderbuzz City, the traitors in the labyrinth were much easier targets.

It was time for him to compete with the players over mobs!

After entrusting the NPC store to Sara, Roan advanced deeper into the mining shaft and converted a slightly wider cavern into his magic workshop. He hung a sign ‘Access Prohibited’ outside the cavern.

He then issued an order, “Youyou, get some players to drag crypt spiders’ carcasses from the storage room here. You can decide on the quest rewards. I’ll leave all the balancing to you.”

The player ‘Autumnleaf’ had acquired quite a few crypt spiders’ carcasses for him. It was time to put them to use!

“Yes, Demon King!” Youyou answered.

The quest was soon issued.

A short while later, Youyou couldn’t resist its curiosity and asked, “May I ask what you are using the crypt spiders for?”

Those things didn’t look yummy.

Roan took out a crucible for concocting potions, a silver knife, and a mortar and pestle.

“It’s nothing much. I’m just making some preparations to speed up my farming.”