Bloody Giant Wang Shi: "Bro, don't say such things. Darkness gems are rare gems. They're way rarer than the normal four elemental ones."
"How about this then. 1500. Call it the price to make a friend!"
Zhang Nu: "800!"
Bloody Giant Wang Shi: "1200. I can't go any lower. I nearly lost my life when I went after this gem."
Zhang Nu ignored him.
He decided to leave the other side out to hang for a bit.
As expected, Bloody Giant Wang Shi wasn't able to keep his cool for long.
After a few minutes, he ended up giving in.
"1000 gold then, alright!"
"800!"
Bloody Giant Wang Shi, after seeing Zhang Nu being so unmoved, could only agree: "Alright, fine. Deal. Call it the price of making a friend. Please take care of me in the future, bro!"
Wang Shi wasn't wrong actually.
Darkness gems are indeed very rare.
However, there's not much use for such gems in the current period, while gold is a resource with tons of uses. Thus, Zhang Nu was certain that the other party would agree to the deal.
He didn't lose out in this deal at all.
Even if Zhang Nu were to keep the gem without using it, its price is sure to rise many times over in the future if he were to save it to sell later.
However, there's no need for that.
Zhang Nu spent a bit more money and bought 100 iron, at the price of 2 gold per iron. As for wood and stone, those he has plenty in his territory.
After gathering everything up, he constructed the building.
The Demon King Castle is different from other buildings in that its location is fixed.
As the core building of the territory, it can only be built on top of the Demon King Altar.
After some shaking, an enormous pitch black castle rose from the ground.
The castle is built in the gothic style, giving off an obsidian like feel to it. It's not particularly large, but it's still more than enough to hold several thousands within it.
[Demon King Castle]. All production within territory +25%. Within a 1000 meter radius, all units of the territory gains +30% to all stats. While the Demon King is within the Castle, recovery speed +100%, all stats +50%.
As expected of a core building.
This effect is indeed extremely powerful.
Just the 25% increase to all production is something that yields an enormous amount of value.
After the Demon King Castle was created, all units, be it skeleton soldiers, goblins, or draconians, felt a burst of energy within them. Their movement speed, stamina, and energy were all buffed.
The Demon King Castle affects everything within a thousand meters.
Thus, It could cover the vast majority of the Darkness Valley.
This is basically equivalent to a permanent buff to nearly the entire territory.
Not only does it increase the productivity of the entire territory, it also strengthens the territory and the army. The boosts it gives are very noticeable indeed.
The Demon King himself is also much stronger while he's inside the Castle.
Thus, it's easy to imagine just how difficult a time Heroes will have trying to challenge a Demon King within the Castle.
Plus, the Demon King Castle is a powerful fortification in and of itself.
The entire castle is designed with three layers. There exists only a single path in and out for each layer too, so it's very easy to set up guards and defenses for. Finally, the Altar is set in the innermost location.
In this situation, it's definitely not easy for any Hero to sneak in to try to destroy the Altar.
It can be said that, with this castle, life will be more comfortable and the territory has become safer.
Zhang Nu can be more relaxed when going out as well.
Although the costs for building the Castle wasn't cheap, it's very much a small cost in comparison to the full improvements it brings to the territory, making it very much worth it!
Besides that, food is only a rare commodity for the time being.
In the future, something like trading this much food for the Castle Blueprint is basically a complete fantasy!
Zhang Nu checked the trade menu again.
The second round of giga potatoes have all been sold out by now as well.
Zhang Nu didn't hurry to resupply the market. Commodities sell for more if they're rare after all. If he just continuously added more to the market, it might instead end up causing the other Demon Kings to hold back from buying so eagerly, thus increasing the transactional fees.
Besides, Zhang Nu didn't really have that many potatoes left either.
His territory's upkeep costs aren't exactly small as well.
Plus, Zhang Nu had no way to directly replant the giga potatoes for new harvests either.
Thus, he has no choice but to find a way to buy more seeds on his own.
He contacted the relevant person.
Zhang Nu: "Are you there?"
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo: "Yes! Here boss!"
Zhang Nu: "I want 10,000 giga potato seeds!"
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo: "..."
Zhang Nu: "Do you not have them?"
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo: "I do, I do. However, that's a bit too much, so I'll need some time to prepare them!"
Zhang Nu: "How long?"
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo: "I'll hand over 3,000 seeds right now. I'll send you the rest within three days."
Chang Nu: "Fine!"
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo: "Do you have any other seeds that you're interested in? I have some pretty good herb seeds here!"
Zhang Nu thought it over a bit.
Although this flower fey seems to have the ability to quickly grow more seeds, her ability also obviously has its limits. He also happens to have part of the Spirit Field still lying fallow, so he might as well also plant some other stuff as well.
Chang Nu took a look at the catalog and selected two types of herb seeds from it.
The first is the life herb, with a normal growth time of a year and a half. This kind of herb can quickly heal wounds, and its HP recovery effect is very strong.
The second is the moonlight ginseng, with a normal growth time of two years. This kind of herb can quickly recover MP and stamina, so it's an absolute necessity for combat and production.
After a bit of haggling, Zhang Nu bought a thousand life herb seeds at 2 seeds per gold. Then he bought 500 moonlight ginseng at 1 per gold.
The more food and medicine, the better.
Zhang Nu basically monopolized Flower Fey Chen Guoguo's entire production.
She could earn several thousand gold from Zhang Nu just via the sale of seeds.
This unquestionably made her one of the richest Demon Kings during the current period.
Flower Fey Chen Guoguo was surprised and overjoyed.
She had decided to firmly latch on to this superpower. Then, in order to satisfy this bigshot's requests, she immediately summoned up more lesser flower fairies to cultivate more seeds and put forth all her efforts toward becoming the other party's merchant of choice.
Now that the seeds are taken care of, a new problem has arisen.
There's not enough farm labor.
Zhang Nu only has 100 or so goblins. Given the Spirit Fields' high yield speed, they're only capable of planting around 10 to 20 fields. They just don't have enough numbers to support more.
At that moment, a draconian soldier ran over to report.
"My lord. The two runaway goblins have returned."
Zhang Nu couldn't understand what's going on, "They escaped, but now they're back? What's going on here?"
T/N: Ah, nation building. It's one of the things I actually quite like in my novels. Better if the progression is natural and does not rely on asspulls, which is something that this novel does pretty well actually.