Chapter 256 Demon Lord Candidate Pt.III

“Ok, so let me get this right, you all don’t care about the details and want to pledge allegiance to me as your leader?”

I was rubbing my temples while looking at everyone. When I called for an impromptu meeting, I found that they’d all suddenly decided to become members of my familia.

Dulk, the kobold leader, 6 lizardmen tribe leaders and Zana, they all bowed down before me. Apparently, Julian told them all that I defeated him and they all immediately revered me as some sort of extraordinary being of immense strength.

However, I didn’t want to be the kind of person who was only followed because they were super strong. At the same time, the way they were all looking at me desperately made me feel guilty. I mean, I did call the orcs and kobolds over, essentially making them Krull’s enemy.

The South was simply following after Zana who told them that there was a benefit in being a part of my familiar. I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that, but they all clearly had their own agendas.

Personally, I had no issue adding them to the familiar since I was capable of stunting their growth completely or directly punishing them with no effort whatsoever should they prove to be a hindrance instead.

After a couple of minutes of talking it out with them, I added them to the familiar and our level rose to a quick 10.

The familiar required another rank up, so I put it on the level of a Large City for 50 familia points. This unlocked the Miscellaneous function in the system store.

I checked it out and there were several options under it. Houses, blueprints, weapons, food resources and other stuff. It would seem that the miscellaneous portion was reserved for just the familiar. My level in the store was still at that of a non-existent customer, but I simply needed to raise my level to do that.

According to the system master, the best way to raise my level was through constant buying and selling of goods. Since the system store had possibly the best resources, it was basically the only place I would be buying from so I should be expecting to see my level raising in due time.

Anyway, the survey had been completed and read through. It would seem the goblins mostly wanted the condo as it was, the timber wolves were fine with wherever, rat men were comfortable in their holes (though they wouldn’t mind having huts on top), the kobolds weren’t many so they stayed inside the mansion and that was basically it.

One thing I realised after seeing the results was that these guys under me were way too comfortable with what they had. The ambition for better living conditions was practically non-existent, except for the goblins. Sure, they were monsters and spent most of their life in the bare outside, but it simply didn’t sit right with me.

There was no way in hell I just ranked up the familia to a Large Town level just to not make an epic town. A passion which I never had was suddenly lit up and a goal had been set. Everyone was going to get a house whether they liked it or not.

I looked to Dulk and asked him how his people did their things. They lived in wooden houses which they built themselves, meaning they were good at construction. I first assigned them to helping Reiman out. The kobolds went to meet their fellow kobolds, leaving those from the south.

They returned, leaving me with Zana alone. She wanted to talk to me, but something came up. I received several messages from Yuuna and Tsuna, speaking of how Julian was killing the goblins. I couldn’t take it seriously since if Julian wanted to kill them, he’d have done it in one move.

I could imagine a scenario where he assumed he was playing with them, but he was simply too strong. With a sigh, I left Zana with the hell kitten. She looked at it, confused as to what to do and I asked her to babysit before leaving.

She was definitely confused, but I didn’t explain any further.

When I got there, I saw a scene with knocked out gobins, several hob-goblins have broken limbs and both Taiku and Oki littered with several open wounds. Yuuna and Tsuna were in the background, looking on with disgruntled expressions.

The reason for that was the fact that Julian had set up and anti-magic area, keeping them unable from interrupting.

“These wounds will fade like they were never there!”

Just as Taiku yelled that, the cuts on his body slowly disappeared. He wearily ran towards a grinning Julian and swiped his sword at him. Julian easily avoided all his attacks then kicked him away.

“Heh. I You are the best hob-goblin I’ve met. Using [Hypnosis] in such a way is also very interesting.”

He said to Taiku who was struggling on the ground. It was hard to tell if he was being sincere or mockful, but it was as clear as day that he wasn’t trying to kill anyone.

Oki on the other hand collapsed with a loud thud. Julian glanced at him once before turning back to Taiku.

“Use that on yourself once more and let’s start from the very beginning.”

However, Taiku was completely unable to use his ability. [Hypnosis] took both mana and stamina from him to use. His stamina was at 0. Doing anymore would be draining from his very vitality, hence killing him.

‘From Julian’s reaction, it would seem he hasn’t noticed that yet.’

I took another look at all the knocked-out goblins. They hadn’t been in the fight. They simply fell unconscious as a result of the status [Absurd Fear]. Julian only played around with the hob-goblins. At least that meant he knew who was too weak to handle him.

With a sigh, I walked towards him and put my hand on his shoulder. He turned around, swiping at me with his blood swipe, which I surprisingly ate. Julian’s eyes widened when he saw that and he jumped back.

“Erhm, my queen. When did you arrive here?”

‘Odd. I thought he had sensed me.’

“Stop calling me a queen. Why the hell were you bullying the goblins?”

“Bullying? I would never. This is simply training.”

“Training?”

“Yes. Now that you’re a demon lord candidate, your army needs to reflect your influence. If the other candidates saw this group of riffraff, I’m afraid you would not even be considered.”

He had a point. A demon lord’s army was most likely stronger than my familia. But I never planned on getting these guys involved. I was always going to summon shadow demons in stead in case of anything demon lord army-related.

“Also, my spawns told me you did something to them. What exactly did you do?”

During my discussion, the spawns said Julian infected them with something. It hurt at first, but now they felt better than ever. I was very curious about that, but postponed it to after the meeting.

“Oh, that? Well, I believed since they were the bodyguards of the demon lord, they needed to be stronger. I simply made them stronger.”

He looked pretty impressed by himself, scratching the top of his nose with a bashful smile.

“Stronger?”

“Yes. Like I shall be doing with you very soon.”

“What?”

“Do not worry. I shan’t use the [Blood Parasytes] on you like I did them. That is merely a coward’s means of acquiring strength. You on the other hand will receive a far better traini-”

He was about to talk some nonsense about training. However, I was confident in my ability to raise my own levels. He wasn’t aware of the system, so he clearly didn’t know that giving me two months to grow was practically a cheat.

My familia members on the other hand didn’t possess S grade talent, so some training from him wouldn’t hurt.

“I’ll be busy for the next 1 month. Please train my familia members instead for that month.”

If they wished to use me, I would use them as well. Milk any and all benefits I could from them.

Julian had question marks floating above his head will looking at me with a blank face.

“Ah… what’s the issue now?”

“Sorry, but I can’t do th-”

“See, you are supposed to listen to your demon lord candidate, right? In that sense you’re my butler and life coach. I can order you to do certain things for me in that sense, right?”

“Ah… I see where you’re going with this. Sadly, that is not ho- huh? Seriously? I see.”

While speaking, he stopped like he’d been struck by lightning. He was having a conversation with his lady. Once he was done, he cleared his throat and straightened his back.

“I shall follow your orders to the letter, my queen. We shall begin the training in one month then.”

He agreed to that and I asked for Sylphie to send some resnosue potions to be used on the beat up hob-goblins. Oki and Taiku were given first aid by me since they’d received the greatest number of beatings, especially Taiku.

I was really impressed by his relentlessness. Tsuna and Yuuna were now scared of Julian, but I reassured them that he wasn’t any trouble. They were both still sceptical. In the end, I couldn’t blame them since they only knew him through his violent actions two days in a row.

Later, I called Reiman to see how the sort of plans he had for the tiny town we were planning on building in Larm. When I saw the blueprints he made, I was starting to feel excited. I also asked for a personal favour. Reiman himself seemed to like the idea and was willing to overlook it with a select number of people.

I told him the orcs would be helping with the constructions. Same for the kobolds, though I also wanted some of them to form parties with goblins and hob-goblins for fetching food and simple exploration.

Julian was forced to stand down for the remainder of the day. He rather wanted to see Grimm. I made him promise to not do anything to Grimm and he agreed. When I fetched the scared vampire, Julian rather teased him.

It would seem Grimm also hated Julian for the way he acted. The only reason anyone ever tolerated Julian was due to the sort of title he'd created for himself back in the vampire kingdom.

The Crazed Bourreau of the Blood Moon or the Fangs of the Vampire Goddess. The queen’s highest ranked soldier and personal executive. He had a success rate of one hundred percent with absolutely ruthless executions. Grimm met him when he was imprisoned for committing an offensive action against the queen.

At first, I thought I found a contradiction in his earlier claims. If Julian had a success rate of 100%, how was Grimm alive? Well, apparently Julian himself had been imprisoned for close to a millennium. It would seem he also committed an offense against the queen, but only received imprisonment instead of execution.

He helped Grimm escape her prisons, so we could rest assured that he wasn’t going to just offer Grimm back as that would simply get him punished in the end.

Still, Grimm warned to not bring Ulva up. I told him that Julian knew Ulva existed, but Grimm still said it was best to keep her as far away from him as possible. There was no telling what the Crazed Bourreau would do.

Both had tea, talked about the past, then Julian kicked Grimm out, all under 5 minutes. That had to be the fastest tea session I’d seen in my life.

That night there was a loud incident in the mesh hall, but since I wasn’t there, I tried my best to ignore it.

FAMILIA

[Familia Name: Hyakkiyako’s Familia

[Familia Level: 10 Experience Points: 0052/9000

[Status: Large Town Level 1

[Familia Head: Hyakkiyako Hinotori

[Skills: [Loyalty Test], [Absolute Command], [Family Bond]

[Family: Zana, Ulva

[Familiars: Amethyst, Tulu

[General: Reiman

[Captains: Oki, Tsuna, Taiku, Nukeme, Yuuna, Shiroi, Kawaii, Sven Rori, Yokino

[Servants: Sylvie, Kara, Inu, Unnamed Silver Back Puma, Dulk, Unnamed Kobold leader, Unnamed Marsh Rusalki, Unnamed Lizardmen

[Most Loyal Servants: Kawaii (250), Shiroi (190), Sylvie (189)

[Minions: Goblins (705), Hob-goblins (11) Rat men (1500), Timber wolves (59), Bugs (28,273), Kobolds (514), Harpies (6), Silver Back Pumas (50), Lizardmen (367), Marsh Rusalkies (1000)

[Named minions: Baka

[Slaves: 1 Human, 24 demi-humans, 4 satyrs

[Familia Points (FP): 170

[Buildings: 1 condo

DAILY ACHIEVEMENTS

FAMILIA

[Tori acquired several familia members]

[The familia level is now 10]

[The familia is now at the Large Town Rank]

[Tori received 50 familia points]