The very next day, Ironbeard set out with his subordinates.
He was going to recall and bring back the fled dwarves.
Although the dwarves would return one after another in the next few days, the population of Ironheart City was still too decimated to undertake reconstruction work.
To solve the population problem, the Demon King replenished nearly 20,000 people for Ironheart City through the Dwarf Castle.
Including 10,000 Dwarven Blacksmiths, 5000 High Dwarven Blacksmith, 100 Dwarven Forge Master, 4000 Dwarven Warriors, and an additional Dwarven City Lord.
Truth be told, Zhang Nu was very hesitant about whether or not to summon the City Lord.
The cost of summoning a Dwarven City Lord was too high.
It required 1.5 million gold, a Level 4 soul and 500 life gems.
The strength of a Level 4 overlord was undoubtedly useful.
However, Zhang Nu already had many subordinates with this level of power.
It seemed a bit wasteful to pay such a high cost just to add a simple high-end combat power.
But in the end, the Demon King still decided to summon him.
What allowed Zhang Nu to make up his mind was not the incredible combat prowess of a Level 4 overlord.
The Dwarven City Lord was an extraordinarily powerful combat unit, but more importantly, he was a top-notch master blacksmith, whose skills far exceeded those of the recruited master blacksmiths.
Suffice to say.
Amongst the entire dwarf population and across the entire continent.
The Dwarven City Lord would still be a peerless blacksmith.
And so, the Dwarven City Lord was summoned.
He was a middle-aged dwarf of about the same age as Stormbeard.
Although he was quite old, his physical condition was at its peak, and he had a much more stable and composed character and a wise mind than the average dwarf.
To facilitate commanding and ordering him, Zhang Nu needed to come up with a name for him.
And Zhang Nu did not like fancy names.
He took a look at the Dwarven City Lord in front of him and was immediately attracted by the most prominent feature of the dwarf.
The weapon held by the Dwarven City Lord.
It was a huge iron hammer.
The hammerhead was as huge as a truck wheel.
The dwarf was only a meter and forty-five centimeters tall, yet he was carrying such a massive iron hammer on him, it looked very bizarre and eye-catching.
"From now on, your name will be Zhang Dachui!"
"Dachui, what a great name! It suits me! Thank you for bestowing the name to me, my master!"
The dwarven city lord laughed heartily.
He was very satisfied with this name.
Zhang Nu then checked the stats of Dachui.
[Dwarven City Lord: Zhang Dachui] Level 4 overlord.
Skills: Divine Avatar (A rank), Hammer of Destruction (A rank), Tempest Hammer (B rank), Iron Bones (B rank), etc.
Description: This is a one in a million existence among the dwarven race. Not only is he a powerful warrior, an outstanding forge master, but also a magnificent and wise dwarven leader.
Not bad.
The exorbitant price seemed reasonable now.
Zhang Dachui's strength was at the level of a Level 4 overlord, about the middle tier amongst other overlord peers, enough to become a competent subordinate.
He could also take the position as the new owner of Ironheart City.
Commanding the entire dwarven race on behalf of Zhang Nu.
Next, Zhang Nu ordered the dwarves to open the treasury of Ironheart City.
The Ironheart City treasure vault.
There were three in total.
Each and every one of them was massive.
The first vault was the resources treasury, mainly storing the dwarf's gold, jewelry, crafts, luxury goods, and various daily necessities. The amount of gold stored within was staggering.
There were an outrageous amount of gold bricks, all of them were the size of a slab.
They were all stacked up into a huge golden wall.
Zhang Nu reached out and instantly received a prompt.
[Gold discovered. Would you like to convert?]
Without hesitation, Zhang Nu immediately proceeded with the conversion, and the golden wall before him disappeared into thin air in an instant, followed by a new prompt.
[Gold successfully converted. Gold +6million-ish?!]
That was a whole six million gold!
If converted into mainland currency, this wall of gold bricks would be worth over sixty million!
Zhang Nu looked around the treasure vault and realized that the gold was just a small part of the dwarves' wealth.
Each chest was filled with pearls, diamonds, and various luxurious treasures.
These items were of no use to the Demon King, but if sold to the human society, their total value might be even higher than that of the golden brick wall.
Zhang Nu never expected that a small mountain dwarven city would be hiding such vast wealth!
Although this treasury was the public property of Ironheart City and did not represent the entire wealth of the Dwarves, it was already terrifyingly rich!
Of course.
Being awestruck by the dwarves' wealth was one thing.
In fact, if one contemplated it, there was nothing strange about it.
Ironheart City could be traced back to at least one or two thousand years ago.
With such a long history and such a profound foundation, it was nigh impossible for the dwarves not to accumulate such massive wealth.
One must understand that the dwarf's treasure vault was almost as attractive to adventurers as a dragon's treasure hoard.
If one were to take that into consideration, the treasury's wealth was actually lesser than expected.
The main reason for that was because the dwarves are too reclusive. They were hardly proactive in dealing with the outside world, and they were not very good at doing business. The lion's share of the profits probably went to the cunning gnome merchants.
In addition.
In the past two hundred years.
Especially the past hundred years.
Under the leadership of the corrupted patriarch Stormbeard, the dwarves had excessively pursued for raw power and madly indulged in daemon blood. Thus, the accumulation rate of wealth had been greatly diminished.
It was a shame.
Otherwise, Zhang Nu could have gotten more.
Although he felt slightly regrettable, he was not disappointed.
The loot from this treasury was enough to cover the summoning cost of nearly 20,000 dwarves.
The gold portion of the treasure had been taken by Zhang Nu.
He could only look for a way to sell the remaining treasures.
Zhang Nu did not overindulge in these sparkling diamonds and pearls, he still needed to continue visiting and scouring the other two treasure vaults.
The second vault was the material treasury.
It housed millions of refined iron blocks, copper blocks, monster materials, and over ten thousand gems of different attributes.
Just these attribute gems alone.
According to the current market price for Demon Kings, they were worth about 18 million gold coins!
If he was to take into account the value of other materials, the total value of this vault would be on par with the first vault, except that there was not a direct way to realize it into gold.
The third vault.
This was the dwarves' equipment vault.
The dwarves were extremely skilled in forging and they loved it even more.
What did they do when the vast amount of equipment forged could not be sold?
Of course, they stored them all in the treasure trove, which contained at least hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment, with even the worst ones being of green quality.
It was just too shocking.
Too spectacular.
Although Zhang Nu had no need for equipment, it did not detract the equipment of its value.
With this massive amount of weapons and armor, how much gold could be earned if he was to sell them all? Not to mention that some of these could be used by his draconian legion.
With the excellently made dwarven equipment, the legion's combat power could be directly raised by ten to twenty percent!
This trip to Ironheart City.
It had been truly rewarding.
If Zhang Nu had not seen it with his own two eyes.
He would not have believed that Ironheart City had such substantial treasure vaults.
It could definitely be considered the wealthiest vault in the entire Chaos Forest.
If the dwarves were not led astray, they would have had high hopes of becoming the most influential forces in the forest.
Ironheart City undoubtedly still had some small treasure troves or vaults here and there.
Zhang Nu did not plan to examine them one by one, as he already had the bulk of the treasure in hand. The rest could be slowly excavated by Dachui and his team during the reconstruction process.
After he returned to Darkness City, Zhang Nu decided to construct the "Soul Altar".
[Consume "Blueprint: Soul Altar" x1, "gold" x5,000,000, "life gem" x2000, "dark gem" x2000, to summon a Soul Altar?]
Although the cost of constructing a Level 5 building was high, he could afford it with his current resources.
Soon after, the construction of the Soul Altar was completed.
From its appearance, it looked like a Mayan-styled trapezoid pyramid, with a purple-black color and various runes etched all over it, emitting a mysterious aura.
Zhang Nu examined the functions of the altar.
It had two primary functions: soul synthesis and soul baptism.
The first function, soul synthesis. The Soul Altar could synthesize Level 1 Hero's soul into Level 2 souls, Level 2's into Level 3's, then Level 3's into Level 4's, and so on and so forth.
The synthesis process would not cause any loss, and the amount of souls consumed in the synthesis was related to the quality of the souls used.
For example, if Level 2 souls were used to synthesize Level 3 souls.
If the quality of the souls were bad, 1 Level 3 souls would require 10 Level 2's.
But if the quality was decent, seven or eight Level 2 souls would suffice.
Seeing this function, Zhang Nu's eyes lit up.
Forget the second function, this synthesis function alone was magnificent.
As a Demon King's level gradually increased, souls would become rarer and scarcer as resources and materials. Many advanced units and rituals required the consumption of souls.
Until now, Zhang Nu had been reluctant to use Level 4 souls because the number of Level 4 warriors was too few.
With this Soul Altar, Zhang Nu could be rid of many concerns.
In the future, he could summon more high-level units like the Sky Drake Archpriest, Earth Drake Grand Marshal, or the Dwarven City Lord, which would significantly enhance the strength of his territory.
In addition to this, there was the soul baptism function.
The function was primarily reserved for the Demon King's subordinates.
Each baptism would consume souls.
And the higher the grade of the consumed souls, the better the final effect produced.
The main effects included: stimulating potential, enhancing talent, optimizing physique, strengthening aptitude, and breaking through the bottleneck of a level.
Theoretically speaking.
Even a draconian laborer with the worst talents possible could be upgraded into a monarch level existence, given enough investment of resources and souls.
Creating a monarch level unit.
This was one the core abilities of Soul Altar.
Intuition told Zhang Nu that this feature would be very incredibly useful in the future.
However, due to the limited souls and resources, it was difficult to invest on a large scale at the moment.