It's done, just like that?
That's pretty good!
Zhang Nu came over to Giantree City by Teleportation Field.
He has four draconian priests now and draconian priests' Teleportation Fields can be freely linked up.
One is staying in Giantree City, while another is staying in the Flower Demon King Chen Guoguo's Myriad Flower Valley.
No matter if something happens in Giantree City or over at Chen Guoguo's, the Demon King and the Darkness Valley army will always be able to quickly reach them.
Zhang Nu arrived at the Tree of Life.
Nancilia was currently leading her elven army back from Giantree Forest.
When she saw that Zhang Nu had shown up, she immediately happily ran up to him, "Your majesty, we finished our task. Giantree Forest is now completely safe!"
Zhang Nu nodded.
The enormous barrier has already been shut down now.
The giant trees of Giantree Forest have already died, so they no longer have the power to maintain the barrier. Thus, the true appearance of the forest is now visible, looking utterly dead.
Zhang Nu frowned.
"Can the forest be healed?"
The Ancient Tree High Priestess Gu Yi spoke, "My lord, although the life force of these elven giant trees have been exhausted, the majority of them aren't completely dead yet. If we use the power of Lifespring water combined with the power of the Tree of Life, they should still be recoverable with time."
Zhang Nu nodded, "Darkness Valley has Lifespring water. I'll have someone send some over to help the forest recover as quickly as possible."
When they heard this news, the elves of Giantree City all celebrated in joy.
Giantree Forest is the homeland of these elves from 300 years ago. Some older elves still remember it, so they still have some sentiments when it comes to this land.
In no time at all, the Giantree City elves' loyalty value shot up again.
Zhang Nu told the young city lord, "Although the Giantree Forest seal is currently relatively stable, you must remain vigilant and keep monitoring it constantly!"
Nancilia hurriedly replied, "Worry not your majesty. I'll send a squad of our elites to stay there permanently to monitor the seal every moment!"
Now that the Giantree Forest barrier is gone, there's no more defenses around it anymore. If the incident from 300 years ago happens again, then Giantree City and the Tree of Life would definitely end up affected. This would cause a huge amount of losses for Zhang Nu, so that's something that Zhang Nu definitely doesn't want to see.
So long as the seal remains, it will continue to be a danger and threat.
Zhang Nu only thought that he needed to level up as quickly as possible.
A level 5 Overlord zone is extremely difficult to conquer, but so long as he reaches level 4, he'll at least be able to give it a try.
Next, Zhang Nu opened up his reward treasure chest.
[You've opened a mythril treasure chest. Gained "gold" x350k, "Blueprint: Temple of Nature", "Level 3 Undead Structure Leveling Scroll", "Skill Stone: Black Hole of Death".]
Zhang Nu noticed that while Giantree City is a level 3 Lord zone and Giantree Forest is a level 3 Overlord zone, based on these two treasure chests, the quality and quantity of the rewards from Giantree City was obviously higher. This shows that the zone level isn't the only factor that determines the reward.
That's not particularly strange though.
Giantree City normally has a permanent resident population of over 100 thousand. The total general population is over 200 thousand. It's definitely a super huge gathering place within the Chaos Forest.
Compared to that, Giantree Forest is just a wild field zone, so it's only natural that it can't compare to the former.
Although the reward is a bit lesser, it's still by no means lacking.
Besides the 350k gold, this time, there were three drops.
[Blueprint: Temple of Nature]. Level 3 blueprint. Costs gold x120k, life gems x50, earth gems x50. You may summon a Temple of Nature within your territory.
[Level 3 Undead Structure Leveling Scroll]. Costs gold x50k, undeath gems x50, wood x2000, stone x5000. You may level any level 2 undead structure to level 3.
[Skill Stone: Black Hole of Death]. B rank skill. Learn condition: MP > 1000.
They're all pretty good.
The Temple of Nature blueprint is a level 3 blueprint.
Right now, level 3 structures are extremely rare among Demon Kings.
Even a Demon King as powerful as Zhang Nu only has a Tree of Life. This Temple of Nature must definitely be something nice.
As for the Undead leveling scroll?
The House of Skeletons is a level 2 undead unit production structure.
It can grant the territory over a thousand skeleton type units. However, now that the draconian army has been rapidly expanding, those skeleton soldiers have already become rather useless.
Of course, by useless, it's only in terms of combat ability.
Skeleton soldiers are still a perfect labor force.
They don't need to eat or drink, nor do they ever get tired. Their upkeep costs are extremely low, and every day, they're responsible for unskilled labor like woodcutting and hauling. They've made quite a bit of contribution to the development of the territory.
With a leveling scroll, it can level the House of Skeletons.
This will also let Zhang Nu get even more and stronger skeleton type units.
The final item is a skill stone. Treasure chests rarely drop skill stones. The vast majority of skill stones generally come from Heroes.
This skill is extremely powerful.
The fallen chief had used it before.
It can cause continuous damage over a large area of effect. It does nothing against undead units, but is extremely damaging against normal life forms. Not even Zhang Nu's Anti-Magic could stop it from continuously causing damage every second.
He's learning it!
After using the skill stone, Zhang Nu gained this skill.
[Black Hole of Death]. B ranked skill. Costs 100 MP to summon a black hole that drains HP. It affects all targets within a diameter of 500 meters. Causes 50 necromantic damage every second. Costs 25 MP per second to maintain.
This skill is quite nice, as he thought.
50 points of necromantic damage doesn't necessarily mean that it would definitely cause a loss of exactly 50 HP.
This depends on the target's resistance to necromantic magic. The actual damage caused would definitely not be quite that much, but given that it's a continuous damage magic, it could accumulate up to quite a shocking amount of damage over time.
Zhang Nu didn't hurry right back to Darkness Valley.
He still had a few things to do in Giantree City.
Giantree City has completely returned to peace by now. Although this has already become a Demon King's city, the citizens of the City didn't experience any real changes in their lives.
They still eat when they should, drink when they should, and work and do business when they should.
Zhang Nu felt like the time was about ripe.
He plans to hire a large group of elven citizens and have them plant, make potions, and craft items for him. Beyond that, he also needs to hire a merchant caravan or two.
Why does he need to hire merchant caravans, one might ask?
It's because Zhang Nu can't just keep his business to just other Demon Kings.
While there might be hundreds of millions of Demon Kings in this world, the problem is that the Demon Kings that Zhang Nu can contact are only the few hundred thousand on his server. Although Demon Kings have high demand for various resources, the market is still limited in the end.
He has ambitions.
Zhang Nu wants to extend his businesses over the entire Forest and even the empire level factions surrounding the Forest. That's a super size market of billions or even more.
This world is extremely large, with countless native nations.
That market is what's truly infinite in size.
Although, through that process, he could collect even more information about the outside world.
For the sake of conquering the great Forest in the future and even in preparation for conquering the neighboring nations, a Demon King with ambition must not be simply satisfied with his own backyard.
"Your majesty!"
"Miss Su Yan's here."
"She says that she wants to introduce a few merchants to you."
Zhang Nu is currently in the Giantree City's lord's office. He was constantly reading through a registry of the elven citizens as well as the reports on merchants in the City. When he heard the young city lord's report, he immediately put down the report in his hands.
"Have her come in!"
"Okay!"
The young city lord quickly ran off.
After about five minutes, the Hero girl came in with three other individuals.
When Zhang Nu saw those three people, a cold gleam came over his eyes.
"Heroes?"
For any other Demon King, unless a Hero pops up and reveals themselves, it's very hard to determine if someone was a native or a Hero.
However, Zhang Nu is different. No Hero is capable of hiding their identity before him, so he only needs a single glance to identify them.
Actually, Zhang Nu was aware that there were a few Heroes in Giantree City who had slipped the net.
It is, after all, a city with a population of around 200 thousand. There's no way that he could personally line every single person up to check them over. However, the scraps left over were of no threat to him.
The three individuals before him might be Heroes, but they're only level 1s.
Their strength is actually not even up to Su Yan's level.
They are a gnome, a lizardman, and a kobold. Of them, the gnome seems to be the leader of the three.
"Mercy oh lord!"
"We definitely won't dare to act as your enemy!"
"We might be Heroes, but we've never killed Demon Kings before!"
Zhang Nu chuckled, "Obviously. If you were capable of killing Demon Kings, then there's no way that you'd still be so weak."
With that, he then turned to Su Yan.
The Hero girl hurriedly introduced them, "The gnome is Rao Sai, the lizardman is Xiao Long, and the kobold is Xia Jun. While they are Heroes, they've been doing business the entire time and haven't ever gotten involved with the battle against Demon Kings."
"When they heard that the boss wanted to develop your own merchant company, they had somehow actually gathered information and found me and asked me to introduce them to you!"
Zhang Nu nodded in response.
The three might be utterly weak, the fact that they, being Heroes, tried to contact a Demon King of their own accord means that they have quite the guts.
Zhang Nu had no interest in killing three level 1 n00bs. He just asked, "Why did you want to collaborate with me?"
The gnome, Rao Sai gave an embarrassed grin, "Oh king, you saw it for yourself that our abilities and racial talents are super weak, so we can only muddle around on the bottom layer of Hero society. Plus, rather than fighting and killing, we'd rather earn money and live a comfortable life."
The status of a Hero does have quite a few advantages, so it's something that can be considered.
The Demon King waved them off, "You can leave for now!"
The three timidly got up in a very nervous mood. If the Demon King decided to not accept them, then they'd be dead for certain.
"Su Yan, what do you think?"
"I think we can give it a try." Su Yan spoke, "There are just way too many Heroes, and it's not like they're all tightly bound. Different individuals have different goals, so we can try drawing a portion of them in."
That's true enough.
People are complicated after all, so it's not like they'd really all die for the sake of a camp that they got randomly slotted into?
Be it Heroes or Demon Kings, in the end, while they're supposed to be on different sides, they're not actually all that different deep down inside. So long as the pros outweigh the cons, it's worth doing.
Zhang Nu thought for a few seconds, "I'll give you a new job."
Su Yan immediately perked up, "A new job? Please order me as you like! I'll definitely do my best!"
Zhang Nu spoke, "Go help me find and test some Heroes and draw them to our side secretly."
Su Yan was shocked, "Boss, do you mean to..."
Zhang Nu nodded, "I plan to create an order of Heroes loyal to me. Let's name it the Dragon's Shadow Heroes Guild!"
Su Yan was dumbfounded.
Just what's going through the boss's head?
Why is a Demon King trying to build a Hero Guild?
"Well? Is it too hard for you?"
"No, not hard at all. I'll take a trip to the various Hero guiles around. I should be able to pick out some suitable people."
"The members of the Hero guild do not necessarily need to be strong, but it's best if they have some good specialization. Beyond that, the most important factor is that they must be reliable!"
Zhang Nu paused for a moment, "So long as you properly complete this job, not only will I greatly reward you, the position of the guildmaster of the Dragon's Shadow Heroes Guild will also be yours."
Su Yan was excited.
Is even a weak and slothful person like her able to be a Heroes guild guildmaster?
Doesn't that mean that her situation is about to turn around?
That's great!
As she thought, following the boss is the path forward!