The Demon King is Unfathomable

The shockwave faded, and the dust settled.

Looking at the horde of deceased crypt spiders, as well as the skeleton soldier who was still clutching tightly to his bone spear, Roan finally lowered his wand and nodded in satisfaction.

‘Not bad. He’s good at kiting. I can continue using him for a long time to come.”

Twilight’s bottom had been clenched up throughout the entire bombardment of stones. He clutched dearly onto the bone spear as if it was his own straw of hope, and he exhaled in relief and got off the bone spear after double confirming that the spell was over.

‘Is this true prower?’

While they were fussing over the crypt spiders’ attacking patterns, the Demon King slaughtered these arachnids with a mere wave of his hand.

‘Damn… I was determined to become Calamity Online’s number one thief, but maybe that’s not the right job to go for?’

Twilight was not the only one who thought that. Dragonthousand wondered the same too.

The Demon King’s ability to summon calamities at a whim was deeply imprinted in her mind.

‘I should be able to gather enough contribution points to raise my Soul Tier within the next two days, but I wonder what are the jobs available.’

At this point, none of the players knew what they thought to be Calamity Online’s power ceiling was nothing more than the Northpeak Shaft’s power ceiling.

Roan accessed his character page to check his gains from the battle, only to find the experience points he earned were much less than anticipated.

“…I only earned 20,000 experience points from 300 crypt spiders? Is it due to our level gap?”

Through Youyou, who was in charge of distribution contribution points, Roan could easily find out what each player had been up to.

All in all, Autumnleaf and Twilight had farmed 90 crypt spiders to advance from LV0 to LV3, which meant they had each earned 30,000 experience points from their hunt.

In comparison to that, Roan’s growth was meager.

“I guess I have to challenge stronger monsters if I want to earn more experience points. Alternatively, I could also make it up with quantity.”

Roan took a blue potion from his cloak, uncorked it, and downed its contents. A surge of warmth flowed into his abdomen and diffused throughout his body before finally converging in his head. ＲÂΝỘ฿ÊṦ

His exhaustion disappeared, and his depleted mana recovered to the brim.

Thanks to that, he was able to quickly pull himself together. Then, he cast an enigmatic gaze upon the players.

“Time to clear this area.”

He took out four test tubes and passed them to the skeleton soldiers.

“Go and draw the spiders here… You know what to do.”

…

Twilight’s earlier demonstration was enough for these skilled players to understand their job. They poured the potions over themselves.

Roan was very satisfied.

‘I’d expect no less from pro gamers. It’s much easier to deal with them. They are nothing like those fools with ridiculous usernames who are always up to nonsense, like hacking my domain core or taking advantage of my cat.’

That was why it was important to have the bigger picture in mind!

‘If only more players would just work with me to make Necropolis big, you could have any cat you want when the time comes! If you can’t kidnap one, you can opt to become one yourself!’

The players were just soul entities anyway. Reincarnating them was as easy as changing jobs in an MMORPG.

The players didn’t have complaints about the situation either.

It was normal for NPCs to order players around like servants during a quest. Veteran players like them had long grown accustomed to that. If anything, they liked how the Demon King got straight to the point. At least he wasn’t the type to nag or give obscure riddles.

This game was already lacking in guidance for new players. It would be ridiculous if they had to guess what NPCs wanted on top of that.

In the hours to come, Roan demonstrated true efficiency to the players, shocking them with his callousness.

Under Roan’s instructions, the players split up and ventured deeper into the labyrinth. They left marks along the way while luring as many monsters as they could back into the hall.

The tens of thousands of ratmen who fell into the labyrinth wouldn’t fall prey to a single hall of spiders. There were far more crypt spiders lurking in the labyrinth beneath Northpeak Shaft!

The sudden abundance of food greatly stimulated the crypt spiders’ desire to procreate.

As the skeleton soldiers smeared with pheromones entered their territory, the lazy spiders quivered excitedly, reminiscent of Orcknight meeting a succubus. They merely stopped short of screaming “Mine, mine!”.

It was hard to tell whether they knew what they were pursuing were skeletons, whom they couldn’t do anything with even if they caught them… maybe except for getting a chock full of ashes on them.

Anyway, the players got an early access experience of being a succubus.

After they lured the spiders into the hall, it was time for the Demon King to flaunt his skills.

If there weren’t too many spiders, he would hurl bone spears with a wave of his wand and kill them one by one.

If there was a huge horde of spiders, he would first hurl a bone spear to mark a safety zone before unleashing his AOE spell to slaughter them. (T/N: AOE refers to area-of-effect, which refers to skills or spells that can deal damage over a wide area.)

He would also occasionally drink a potion or sit down to meditate.

During these times, his zombie would fight on his behalf, swinging his greatsword to slay the crypt spiders chasing after the players.

‘Isn’t this game too advantageous to mages?’

Autumnleaf was envious. If only this game had a cash shop, he wouldn’t hesitate to pump real-life money in!

What he wanted wasn’t too much.

As long as it could cast spells, he wouldn’t mind turning into a spider or a slime!

Time ticked by.

The spider carcasses in the hall were stacked into little hills. Dark red and pale yellow fluids flowed like streams, making this spider-web-filled room look even more grotesque than before.

As more crypt spiders flopped over and died, Roan’s experience points soared, but the players also received a share of the pie too. They didn’t receive many experience points from each crypt spider as they didn’t deal too much damage to them, but that was compensated by quantity.

Even if each spider only gave them two digits worth of experience points, that multiplied by a thousand still amounted to tens of thousands!

The experience points ceiling for an LV3 was 30,000.

Before Autumnleaf knew it, he had already filled up the experience bar. An unexpected transformation happened when he overcame his LV3 bottleneck.

“W-what’s going on?”

An eerie green light manifested out of thin air and enveloped Autumnleaf, engulfing him with a sensation of unprecedented power.

All this while, his skeleton soldier avatar felt not much different from his real-life body—just without skin and flesh—but the earlier level up changed things. His reflexes and strength were nothing like before.

Just then, a sticky ball of white fluid flew at him.

Thus far, this attack had required his full concentration to dodge, but this time, he managed to pull off the same feat with a casual duck.

The crypt spiders were also stunned by his changes. Their scuttering footsteps slowed as they reassessed whether it was worth the risk pursuing the troublesome sack of bones before them.

Making use of this opening, Autumnleaf quickly retreated before examining his body.

It could be his imagination, but his brittle bones appeared to have become much thicker than before. His weak joints had also stopped creaking as if someone had oiled it.

He quickly checked his character page, and there was indeed something amiss.

【ID: Autumnleaf

Race: Skeleton

Soul Tier: Iron (Level Cap: 10)

Level: 4

Experience Points: 18/40,000

HP: 300/300

MP: 100/100

Constitution: 3 (+1)

Strength: 6 (+1)

Agility: 3 (+1)

Intelligence: 1 (+1)

Psyche: 1 (+1)】

All his stats had gone up by 1!

In particular, his mana pool, intelligence, and psyche were no longer 0!

Autumnleaf was overjoyed to see his updated character page.

At the same time, a light-green notification window popped out.

【Server Announcement: Congratulations to Autumnleaf for becoming the first player in this server to reach ‘Iron-tier’! May other players work harder to usher prosperity to Necropolis!】

Autumnleaf was both delighted and embarrassed by the announcement.

Even though the server announcement reflected the developer’s sincerity, if there was a choice, he would have preferred to conceal his username. He didn’t like to be too high profile.

Meanwhile, Dragonmyriad, Dragonthousand, and Dragonhundred, who had just lured a wave of spiders over and were currently resting, looked at the announcement with envious faces.

“He beat us to it.”

“He has already earned 1000 contribution points?!”

“Looks like it.”

They had planned to score a few early achievements to build Dragon Odyssey’s reputation in Calamity Online. That would aid them in uniting the closed beta players together.

It was a pity to have missed this opportunity.

Dragonmyriad: “It can’t be helped. I remember they had been farming crypt spiders since yesterday. It’s no surprise their contribution points are way ahead of ours.”

They had tried farming crypt spiders too, but their farming efficiency was too low, and there were even casualties. These skeletons were just too weak; even their real-life bodies were stronger.

On top of that, this game had a limited number of closed beta slots, and the slots were distributed by random. This prevented him from mobilizing his guild. The only support he had was from Dragonthousand and Dragonhundred, who managed to obtain closed beta slots too.

After weighing the pros and cons, they decided to farm the easier ratmen first.

That allowed them to grow faster, but it unfortunately capped the contribution points they could earn in a day too. Looking back, it might have been the wrong choice to opt for the easier path.

On the other hand, Twilight thought nothing about the server announcement. If anything, he thought it should have appeared much earlier.

Autumnleaf had already advanced to Iron-tier early in the morning; the only thing lacking was his experience points.

“…Seems like just raising our Soul Tier isn’t enough. We have to raise our levels too.”

This was fairer to most players.

Given that it was possible to trade crypt spider carcasses, it should be safe to say that it was possible to ‘buy’ contribution points and hell coins. It was only impossible to do so now because there were too few people on the server.

There were bound to be such private trades in the future. This was unavoidable in such games.

Experience points, on the other hand, had to be personally earned.

While it was possible to hire a stronger player to help out, it would be all for naught if the player couldn’t dish out any damage.

Seeing the three ‘Dragon’ players getting all revved up once more, a certain demon king revealed a triumphant smile.

That earlier server announcement, rather than a reward to Autumnleaf, was more like a reminder to the lazy bums in the server to work harder.

‘Take a good look! All of you started out as the same shitty skeleton, but why is it that someone can reach Iron-tier in a single day whereas the others have stagnated at LV3?’

‘If none of you are working hard, how can I grow my demon king domain and become stronger? If I have to do everything myself, what use do I have for you fools?’

Roan uncorked another blue potion and downed its contents. Then, he raised his arm to wipe the corners of his lips.

To his astonishment, he noticed a crimson smudge on his sleeves in his peripheral vision.

‘Huh? A nosebleed?’

Drip, drip.

While he was in a daze, red droplets fell beside his shoes.

“Demon King, you should take care of your body… If I’m not mistaken, such potions come with side effects, right?” Youyou looked at Roan with concerned eyes.

This was already his seventh bottle, and he instinctively understood that excessive consumption of potions wasn’t a good thing.

“I’m fine. Maybe the excessive spellcasting overloaded my psyche… It’s not necessarily the potion’s problem.”

‘Is my constitution too weak? The underworld’s demons gulp down many bottles of this potion—at a monstrously concentrated level at that—in a single sitting, yet they are still fine…’

Looking at the blood dripping on the floor, Roan felt slightly fearful.

“…I guess I’ll rest a bit first.”

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