CH 126
After killing the Vampire Demon King.
Su Yan demolished the Demon King Altar.
[You've destroyed a Demon King's Altar. You've gained a Demon King Treasure Chest!]
[You've opened the Demon King Treasure Chest. You've gained "Skill Stone: Blood Ignition," "Skill Stone: Blood Regeneration," "Skill Stone: Shadow Lurk," "Skill Stone: Bloody Claw," "Vampire Soft Armor," "Vampire Longsword," and "Vampire Medallion!"]
The treasure chests awarded to Heroes could not provide currencies like gold or items like blueprints.
However, it had a high chance of yielding skill stones and equipment.
Without a doubt.
The quality of this treasure chest was excellent.
The skill stones and equipment within were top notch.
Su Yan took the initiative to offer up the treasure chest to the Dragon Demon King.
Zhang Nu took a glance, "Except for "Blood Ignition" and "Bloody Claw", consider everything else as your reward this time."
"Thank you, Boss!" replied Su Yan jubilantly.
Zhang Nu had no need for equipment.
It was useless to him.
As for the two skills, one was a healing skill, the other was another stealth skill.
Zhang Nu had similar ones in his collection of skill stones, and there were many others with very similar effect. Therefore, he lost interest in them and just simply rewarded the skill stones to the fox girl.
He used up the two skills he had picked.
[Blood Ignition], B rank skill. Temporarily consumes 1 point of maximum HP to increase the damage of attacks by 1 point. The recovery speed of the consumed vitality is correlated to the consumption ratio and physique attributes.
This skill could significantly increase the damage output of a blow.
Nevertheless, it came at the price of consuming maximum HP.
The price was not permanent, but if too much was consumed at once, it would require a much longer rest to recuperate. If the user's HP was overdrawn too severely, there might even be a risk of permanently losing a portion of the maximum HP.
In the past.
Gray, the old city lord of Berserk Beast City.
Had severely injured Zhang San in his earth drake form during their clash.
The skill he employed back then was similar to Blood Ignition.
This type of skill had strong side effects, but in certain specific moments, especially in life and death situations, it could turn the tide of battle and result in a comeback victory.
But of course.
In Zhang Nu's eyes.
Sacrificing one's own life to empower their attack power.
It was a reckless and undesirable act that should be avoided.
It should only be used in a life and death situation when it was absolutely necessary.
However, as the saying went, "One can never have too many skills." If one had yet to learn a similar skill before, there was no harm in learning one now.
[Bloody Claw], B rank skill. Upon activation, each attack consumes at least 25 MP and adds 100 points of additional physical damage. Everytime a target is damaged, it will also drain a small amount of their HP.
This was a claw-type combat skill.
It also came with a vampiric effect.
Zhang Nu then led Su Yan out of the Vampire Demon King's castle.
Su Yan walked out to find herself greeted by a shocking scene. The Vampire Demon King's territory was littered with bodies and corpses. Dozens of warmonger royal guards, as well as several mythic royal guards were standing among the bodies.
It turned out.
Before infiltrating the castle.
Zhang Nu had summoned his royal guards to his side.
He then issued a search-and-destroy order to the guards and had them deal with the Vampire Demon King's forces outside.
The royal guards were tremendously powerful, each and every single one of them possessed the strength of a Level 4 lord. The vampire troops were crushed and slaughtered, they were forced to retreat and suffered heavy casualties.
Soon after.
Due to the death of the Demon King and the destruction of the altar, the remaining soldiers were banished and completely vanished from the Demon King's territory.
Only dead silence remained in the area.
At the same time.
A prompt notification appeared.
[You've conquered "Bloody Fortress"!]
[You gained "Exquisite Mithril Chest" x1!]
Zhang Nu had received the prompt of successful conquering.
Which indicated that the fortress battle was over.
Zhang Nu took Su Yan back to Bloody Fortress.
The draconian legion was cleaning up the aftermath.
Li Si, the high priest reported, "Reporting to Your Majesty, we have captured the Bloody Fortress. Seventy percent of the defending army has been wiped out, and there are nearly ten thousand surrendered captives, with several thousands more who escaped. The super soldiers are currently on the pursuit as we speak."
The Bloody Fortress.
It had truly lived up to its name this time.
The draconian legion nearly massacred the entire city.
It was because Bloody Fortress was not an ordinary forest city.
It was a military stronghold, where there were no civilians, only the Divine Sword Heroes and the armies who they recruited and enlisted.
Which was exactly why.
There was no need for mercy.
It was for the best to purge the entire city.
Li Si continued and asked, "Your Majesty, to prevent the empire forces from reusing the fortress, should we burn the city to the ground and completely level this place before heading back?"
There were justifications behind the high priest's proposal.
The fact that the empire built a fortress here was enough to indicate that this place had strategic value.
The Bloody Fortress was only about 1,500 miles from the southern border of the empire, especially the territory of Count Kolo.
Along this path, there were no large forces or dangerous areas, even the terrain was relatively flat.
Needless to say.
This was one of the fastest routes for the empire to enter the Chaos Forest.
If the Bloody Fortress was successfully constructed and settled, the empire would be able to transport supplies and materials through the Kolo Province continuously, and the fortress would be an outpost for secretly controlling the Chaos Forest.
From Li Si's perspective.
The draconian legion had limited forces and manpower.
Darkness City did not have enough troops to be stationed in this place.
The city served no purpose to the economic development of the territory, hence, the best course of action was to raze and flatten the stronghold rather than leaving it intact for the enemies.
"No need!", asserted Zhang Nu.
"Such a large fortress."
"It probably cost a lot of manpower and resources."
"It would be too wasteful to just destroy it like this."
The Bloody Fortress was originally a small forest city.
The Vampire Demon King Bai Hongzhuo had captured and taken over this city. However, due to his incapability of distinguishing between the Heroes and natives, he had feared that there were Heroes mixed in with the captives, which would pose a threat to himself. Therefore, he simply slaughtered the inhabitants.
This, in actuality, was not an extreme approach.
Most Demon Kings would make a similar choice.
Not every Demon King had "sharp eyes" like Zhang Nu, who could easily see through the identity of Heroes. For these Demon Kings, in order to prevent being assassinated, killing and collecting gold from the surrendered captives was undoubtedly the most effortless way.
As for what happened later in this forest city, there was no need to go into further details.
The Divine Sword Heroes Guild then took over the city, recruited and raised a large army, and at the same time, transformed the city into the current Bloody Fortress.
Defense Barriers.
The defensive barrier, as well as various magical formations alone.
Would require heavy investment to construct.
Which was why Zhang Nu felt that it would be a pity to demolish it.
In the long run.
Zhang Nu and the Thunder Empire would definitely go for each other's throat.
Since the Bloody Fortress could become the empire's outpost to control the Chaos Forest, why couldn't it become a frontline stronghold for the Demon King to fight against the empire?
Not only did Zhang Nu not intend to destroy the fortress.
Instead, he planned to immediately deploy two to three thousand draconian laborers and craftsmen to repair the fortress and complete the remaining construction as soon as possible.
As for the fact that there were not enough troops from the Darkness City.
That was never an issue.
Zhang Nu was a Demon King, and if he ever ran out of soldiers, he could just summon more. Besides, even if the troops in Darkness City were insufficient, there were still large elite forces in the Giantree City and Berserk Beast City.
The empire was an enemy of the entire Chaos Forest.
The elves and orcs also had grudges against the humans of the empire.
Zhang San then asked, "Your Majesty, what should we do with these prisoners of war? Most of them were mercenaries hired by the Divine Sword from various tribes."
Zhang Nu remarked, "Send them to Berserk Beast City to mine."
These prisoners of war.
Were mostly normal units.
Killing them would not yield much gold.
These mercenaries hired by the Divine Sword were generally bear-kin, tiger-kin, orcs, and minotaurs, which were endowed with great strength, fitting to be sent to mining.
With the Divine Sword Heroes dealt with.
Zhang Nu returned to Darkness City with his legion.
His next plan was to exterminate the remaining eleven Demon Kings.
The rest of these Demon Kings.
They were all only Level 3.
They were not particularly powerful.
It was not necessary for Zhang Nu to get rid of them himself.
He could just leave them to his subordinates.
This Demon King subjugation operation would inevitably require the cooperation of Su Yan and the Dragon's Shadow Heroes, which would also act as an opportunity to improve the overall strength of the Dragon's Shadow.
After returning to Darkness City.
Zhang Nu summarized the gains.
He hauled in a total of 700,000 gold coins from the kill rewards.
Then, Zhang Nu opened the reward chest for capturing the Bloody Fortress.
[You opened the Mithril Treasure Chest. You've gained "Gold" x900,000, "Blueprint: Thunderfall Tower" x1, "Blueprint: Farsight Tower" x1, "Life Gem" x100!]
Not bad at all.
Two blueprints were obtained.
Both blueprints belonged to the defense building type.
The "Blueprint: Thunderfall Tower" was a Level 3 blueprint, which was a defensive structure that summoned thunder to strike its foes.
As for the "Blueprint: Farsight Tower" was a Level 2 blueprint, which was a reconnaissance-type defensive tower that could spot targets from afar.
The Darkness City already had the Tower of Evil Eye.
This Level 4 building not only possessed a much longer detection range, but also had the features of surveillance and offensive attack.
Compared to that, the Farsight Tower was much inferior.
Nonetheless, it was not worthless.
Zhang Nu intended to install it in the Bloody Fortress.
It could be used to monitor the frontline to prevent the empire's invasion.
In regards to souls.
This time, Zhang Nu gained a Level 4 soul, twenty Level 3 souls, as well as several hundreds of Level 1 and 2 souls, which was procured from the fodders recruited by the Divine Sword Heroes from all around the forest. Although the scale was not small, it was not sufficient to activate any of the talents.
Instead, Zhang Nu simply took out 2 million gold and the Level 4 Hero's Soul, and sent Li Si onto the altar for his upgrade.
[Sky Drake Archpriest], Level 4 overlord unit. HP 1600, MP 3000, Strength 65, Constitution 70, Agility 85, Will 400, Loyalty 100%(Locked), Fatigue 10%, Hunger 10%.
Skills: Inferno Three-Headed Drake Form (Talent), Demon King Summoning (Talent), Spatial Teleportation (A Rank), Blood Ritual (A Rank), Teleportation Field (A Rank), Healing Field (A Rank), Death Field (A Rank), Weakening Field (A Rank), Prayer Ritual (B Rank), Instant Teleportation (B Rank), All-Knowing Eye (B Rank), Echoing Thunderfall Curse (B Rank), Flame Explosion Curse (D Rank)...
Presently, the more manpower there was, the better.
Zhang San and Li Si had both been promoted to Level 4 overlord units.
They would be able to relieve Zhang Nu from a lot of trivial work now.
After being upgraded into the Sky Drake Archpriest, Li Si now possessed even more rank A skills than Zhang San. His bloodline has also evolved from an Inferno Winged Drake into an Inferno Three-Headed Drake.
The Inferno Three-Headed Drake was a rare subspecies of the Inferno Winged Drake.
Now, in his winged drake form, Li Si would have three heads instead of just one. His combat prowess and abilities were also greatly enhanced.
As for skills.
Li Si obtained two additional special skills.
One of which was "Demon King Summoning".
Li Si, the Sky Drake Archpriest now had the ability to summon Zhang Nu, the Demon King himself.
This was similar to Zhang Nu's summoning of the royal guards. The difference was that the royal guards were forcibly summoned by Zhang Nu and had to obey his every order, whereas the archpriest had to follow the will of the Demon King after the summoning.
In other words.
Wherever Li Si went.
Zhang San could arrive there in no time.
In addition to this, Li SI gained a rank A "Spatial Teleportation" skill, which had a similar effect to the teleportation field, but much less of a hassle than the teleportation field.
There was no need for preparing a magical formation in advance.
It was more suitable for single target fixed point teleportation.
For example, after the Demon King was summoned by Li Si, he could use the skill to send the Demon King back.
Suffice to say.
This was a very convenient skill.
The cost of upgrading Li Si into a Sky Drake Archpriest was exorbitant.
However, from the perspective of skill effects and strength improvement.
Zhang Nu believed that the price was completely worth it.
With an archpriest in hand, its effect and usefulness might even surpass that of thousands of troops, and Zhang Nu's control over the territory would be stronger than before.
Su Yan demolished the Demon King Altar.
[You've destroyed a Demon King's Altar. You've gained a Demon King Treasure Chest!]
[You've opened the Demon King Treasure Chest. You've gained "Skill Stone: Blood Ignition," "Skill Stone: Blood Regeneration," "Skill Stone: Shadow Lurk," "Skill Stone: Bloody Claw," "Vampire Soft Armor," "Vampire Longsword," and "Vampire Medallion!"]
The treasure chests awarded to Heroes could not provide currencies like gold or items like blueprints.
However, it had a high chance of yielding skill stones and equipment.
Without a doubt.
The quality of this treasure chest was excellent.
The skill stones and equipment within were top notch.
Su Yan took the initiative to offer up the treasure chest to the Dragon Demon King.
Zhang Nu took a glance, "Except for "Blood Ignition" and "Bloody Claw", consider everything else as your reward this time."
"Thank you, Boss!" replied Su Yan jubilantly.
Zhang Nu had no need for equipment.
It was useless to him.
As for the two skills, one was a healing skill, the other was another stealth skill.
Zhang Nu had similar ones in his collection of skill stones, and there were many others with very similar effect. Therefore, he lost interest in them and just simply rewarded the skill stones to the fox girl.
He used up the two skills he had picked.
[Blood Ignition], B rank skill. Temporarily consumes 1 point of maximum HP to increase the damage of attacks by 1 point. The recovery speed of the consumed vitality is correlated to the consumption ratio and physique attributes.
This skill could significantly increase the damage output of a blow.
Nevertheless, it came at the price of consuming maximum HP.
The price was not permanent, but if too much was consumed at once, it would require a much longer rest to recuperate. If the user's HP was overdrawn too severely, there might even be a risk of permanently losing a portion of the maximum HP.
In the past.
Gray, the old city lord of Berserk Beast City.
Had severely injured Zhang San in his earth drake form during their clash.
The skill he employed back then was similar to Blood Ignition.
This type of skill had strong side effects, but in certain specific moments, especially in life and death situations, it could turn the tide of battle and result in a comeback victory.
But of course.
In Zhang Nu's eyes.
Sacrificing one's own life to empower their attack power.
It was a reckless and undesirable act that should be avoided.
It should only be used in a life and death situation when it was absolutely necessary.
However, as the saying went, "One can never have too many skills." If one had yet to learn a similar skill before, there was no harm in learning one now.
[Bloody Claw], B rank skill. Upon activation, each attack consumes at least 25 MP and adds 100 points of additional physical damage. Everytime a target is damaged, it will also drain a small amount of their HP.
This was a claw-type combat skill.
It also came with a vampiric effect.
Zhang Nu then led Su Yan out of the Vampire Demon King's castle.
Su Yan walked out to find herself greeted by a shocking scene. The Vampire Demon King's territory was littered with bodies and corpses. Dozens of warmonger royal guards, as well as several mythic royal guards were standing among the bodies.
It turned out.
Before infiltrating the castle.
Zhang Nu had summoned his royal guards to his side.
He then issued a search-and-destroy order to the guards and had them deal with the Vampire Demon King's forces outside.
The royal guards were tremendously powerful, each and every single one of them possessed the strength of a Level 4 lord. The vampire troops were crushed and slaughtered, they were forced to retreat and suffered heavy casualties.
Soon after.
Due to the death of the Demon King and the destruction of the altar, the remaining soldiers were banished and completely vanished from the Demon King's territory.
Only dead silence remained in the area.
At the same time.
A prompt notification appeared.
[You've conquered "Bloody Fortress"!]
[You gained "Exquisite Mithril Chest" x1!]
Zhang Nu had received the prompt of successful conquering.
Which indicated that the fortress battle was over.
Zhang Nu took Su Yan back to Bloody Fortress.
The draconian legion was cleaning up the aftermath.
Li Si, the high priest reported, "Reporting to Your Majesty, we have captured the Bloody Fortress. Seventy percent of the defending army has been wiped out, and there are nearly ten thousand surrendered captives, with several thousands more who escaped. The super soldiers are currently on the pursuit as we speak."
The Bloody Fortress.
It had truly lived up to its name this time.
The draconian legion nearly massacred the entire city.
It was because Bloody Fortress was not an ordinary forest city.
It was a military stronghold, where there were no civilians, only the Divine Sword Heroes and the armies who they recruited and enlisted.
Which was exactly why.
There was no need for mercy.
It was for the best to purge the entire city.
Li Si continued and asked, "Your Majesty, to prevent the empire forces from reusing the fortress, should we burn the city to the ground and completely level this place before heading back?"
There were justifications behind the high priest's proposal.
The fact that the empire built a fortress here was enough to indicate that this place had strategic value.
The Bloody Fortress was only about 1,500 miles from the southern border of the empire, especially the territory of Count Kolo.
Along this path, there were no large forces or dangerous areas, even the terrain was relatively flat.
Needless to say.
This was one of the fastest routes for the empire to enter the Chaos Forest.
If the Bloody Fortress was successfully constructed and settled, the empire would be able to transport supplies and materials through the Kolo Province continuously, and the fortress would be an outpost for secretly controlling the Chaos Forest.
From Li Si's perspective.
The draconian legion had limited forces and manpower.
Darkness City did not have enough troops to be stationed in this place.
The city served no purpose to the economic development of the territory, hence, the best course of action was to raze and flatten the stronghold rather than leaving it intact for the enemies.
"No need!", asserted Zhang Nu.
"Such a large fortress."
"It probably cost a lot of manpower and resources."
"It would be too wasteful to just destroy it like this."
The Bloody Fortress was originally a small forest city.
The Vampire Demon King Bai Hongzhuo had captured and taken over this city. However, due to his incapability of distinguishing between the Heroes and natives, he had feared that there were Heroes mixed in with the captives, which would pose a threat to himself. Therefore, he simply slaughtered the inhabitants.
This, in actuality, was not an extreme approach.
Most Demon Kings would make a similar choice.
Not every Demon King had "sharp eyes" like Zhang Nu, who could easily see through the identity of Heroes. For these Demon Kings, in order to prevent being assassinated, killing and collecting gold from the surrendered captives was undoubtedly the most effortless way.
As for what happened later in this forest city, there was no need to go into further details.
The Divine Sword Heroes Guild then took over the city, recruited and raised a large army, and at the same time, transformed the city into the current Bloody Fortress.
Defense Barriers.
The defensive barrier, as well as various magical formations alone.
Would require heavy investment to construct.
Which was why Zhang Nu felt that it would be a pity to demolish it.
In the long run.
Zhang Nu and the Thunder Empire would definitely go for each other's throat.
Since the Bloody Fortress could become the empire's outpost to control the Chaos Forest, why couldn't it become a frontline stronghold for the Demon King to fight against the empire?
Not only did Zhang Nu not intend to destroy the fortress.
Instead, he planned to immediately deploy two to three thousand draconian laborers and craftsmen to repair the fortress and complete the remaining construction as soon as possible.
As for the fact that there were not enough troops from the Darkness City.
That was never an issue.
Zhang Nu was a Demon King, and if he ever ran out of soldiers, he could just summon more. Besides, even if the troops in Darkness City were insufficient, there were still large elite forces in the Giantree City and Berserk Beast City.
The empire was an enemy of the entire Chaos Forest.
The elves and orcs also had grudges against the humans of the empire.
Zhang San then asked, "Your Majesty, what should we do with these prisoners of war? Most of them were mercenaries hired by the Divine Sword from various tribes."
Zhang Nu remarked, "Send them to Berserk Beast City to mine."
These prisoners of war.
Were mostly normal units.
Killing them would not yield much gold.
These mercenaries hired by the Divine Sword were generally bear-kin, tiger-kin, orcs, and minotaurs, which were endowed with great strength, fitting to be sent to mining.
With the Divine Sword Heroes dealt with.
Zhang Nu returned to Darkness City with his legion.
His next plan was to exterminate the remaining eleven Demon Kings.
The rest of these Demon Kings.
They were all only Level 3.
They were not particularly powerful.
It was not necessary for Zhang Nu to get rid of them himself.
He could just leave them to his subordinates.
This Demon King subjugation operation would inevitably require the cooperation of Su Yan and the Dragon's Shadow Heroes, which would also act as an opportunity to improve the overall strength of the Dragon's Shadow.
After returning to Darkness City.
Zhang Nu summarized the gains.
He hauled in a total of 700,000 gold coins from the kill rewards.
Then, Zhang Nu opened the reward chest for capturing the Bloody Fortress.
[You opened the Mithril Treasure Chest. You've gained "Gold" x900,000, "Blueprint: Thunderfall Tower" x1, "Blueprint: Farsight Tower" x1, "Life Gem" x100!]
Not bad at all.
Two blueprints were obtained.
Both blueprints belonged to the defense building type.
The "Blueprint: Thunderfall Tower" was a Level 3 blueprint, which was a defensive structure that summoned thunder to strike its foes.
As for the "Blueprint: Farsight Tower" was a Level 2 blueprint, which was a reconnaissance-type defensive tower that could spot targets from afar.
The Darkness City already had the Tower of Evil Eye.
This Level 4 building not only possessed a much longer detection range, but also had the features of surveillance and offensive attack.
Compared to that, the Farsight Tower was much inferior.
Nonetheless, it was not worthless.
Zhang Nu intended to install it in the Bloody Fortress.
It could be used to monitor the frontline to prevent the empire's invasion.
In regards to souls.
This time, Zhang Nu gained a Level 4 soul, twenty Level 3 souls, as well as several hundreds of Level 1 and 2 souls, which was procured from the fodders recruited by the Divine Sword Heroes from all around the forest. Although the scale was not small, it was not sufficient to activate any of the talents.
Instead, Zhang Nu simply took out 2 million gold and the Level 4 Hero's Soul, and sent Li Si onto the altar for his upgrade.
[Sky Drake Archpriest], Level 4 overlord unit. HP 1600, MP 3000, Strength 65, Constitution 70, Agility 85, Will 400, Loyalty 100%(Locked), Fatigue 10%, Hunger 10%.
Skills: Inferno Three-Headed Drake Form (Talent), Demon King Summoning (Talent), Spatial Teleportation (A Rank), Blood Ritual (A Rank), Teleportation Field (A Rank), Healing Field (A Rank), Death Field (A Rank), Weakening Field (A Rank), Prayer Ritual (B Rank), Instant Teleportation (B Rank), All-Knowing Eye (B Rank), Echoing Thunderfall Curse (B Rank), Flame Explosion Curse (D Rank)...
Presently, the more manpower there was, the better.
Zhang San and Li Si had both been promoted to Level 4 overlord units.
They would be able to relieve Zhang Nu from a lot of trivial work now.
After being upgraded into the Sky Drake Archpriest, Li Si now possessed even more rank A skills than Zhang San. His bloodline has also evolved from an Inferno Winged Drake into an Inferno Three-Headed Drake.
The Inferno Three-Headed Drake was a rare subspecies of the Inferno Winged Drake.
Now, in his winged drake form, Li Si would have three heads instead of just one. His combat prowess and abilities were also greatly enhanced.
As for skills.
Li Si obtained two additional special skills.
One of which was "Demon King Summoning".
Li Si, the Sky Drake Archpriest now had the ability to summon Zhang Nu, the Demon King himself.
This was similar to Zhang Nu's summoning of the royal guards. The difference was that the royal guards were forcibly summoned by Zhang Nu and had to obey his every order, whereas the archpriest had to follow the will of the Demon King after the summoning.
In other words.
Wherever Li Si went.
Zhang San could arrive there in no time.
In addition to this, Li SI gained a rank A "Spatial Teleportation" skill, which had a similar effect to the teleportation field, but much less of a hassle than the teleportation field.
There was no need for preparing a magical formation in advance.
It was more suitable for single target fixed point teleportation.
For example, after the Demon King was summoned by Li Si, he could use the skill to send the Demon King back.
Suffice to say.
This was a very convenient skill.
The cost of upgrading Li Si into a Sky Drake Archpriest was exorbitant.
However, from the perspective of skill effects and strength improvement.
Zhang Nu believed that the price was completely worth it.
With an archpriest in hand, its effect and usefulness might even surpass that of thousands of troops, and Zhang Nu's control over the territory would be stronger than before.
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