Akor looked at the rapidfire messages showing more and more demon lords appearing. He blinked several times and his brow raised, “Are demon lords that common?” he thought.

He tried to remember the process of choosing the class and realized the lord class was only half as small as other classes. It made sense after realizing that the ‘lord’ class itself was quite common and it was simply a ‘demon noble’ appearing. The problem came when taking into account the Lore of the world which he did not know. All he knew was that demon lords were announced once they finally placed their demon heart.

As for where they did this? Different from Akor, most of them went towards the Hellish Badlands instead of away because they would obtain a much greater benefit. These were ‘gamers’ who would choose obvious and most beneficial choices for themselves.

As for the other race lords, they were much quieter as they began to move hidden from the eyes of the large kings and nations to slowly develop in secret.

Since Akor could do nothing, he just choose to continue developing his village. These upgrades were the Demon Nest ‘straw floor’ and the Wild Fruit Field’s tilled soil.

These were quick to accomplish upgrades really. As for the effects they gave, it was actually much smaller than expected.

The Demon Nest had a 1 egg for 12 hours, depending on the population of course. Now the incubation speed was 1.2 eggs for 12 hours, with 2 demon nests, that is 2.4 eggs every 12 hours, how this works seems to be is that every 3rd day, 3 eggs will hatch at once.

If it kept up like this, once it was 1.5 every 12 hours each nest, the hatch rate would be 3 eggs per day.

This would be a great help, this is considering if the population birth rate was still 1:5.

Now the Wild Fruit fields were improved in a similar proportion, first off the fields were properly tilled, it formed the straight line fields and the current crops were planted in line. The harvest quantity increased from 1 unit per day to 1.2 units per day. With five fields, that would mean 6 units per day.

“Good, starting tomorrow, i will probably get wild spawns as well.” Akor said but he forgot about the fact that at noon and midnight he would also get egg spawns. That would be 8 minions and his current food stock was also 8 units. Imps ate 0.2 units daily so with only 6 increase daily, he would need to wait much longer to spawn wild imps.

The imps also got their exp for the upgrade missions but they currently needed 200 exp to level up to level 3, gaining only 10 or 20 exp for each upgrade mission, it would be quite a while to get them to level up.

It was a very hard path, to raise a demon nation without fighting but he simply couldn’t do that with such a low population.

“Let’s max out the nests and field first off.” He said after all the upgrades. Although he didn’t know what the use of fences were when there were so few monsters, taking into account that he was only in a tutorial area which limited monsters to level 5, he thought it wouldn’t be bad to upgrade them.

Similar to before, missions worth 10 exp each. He increased the size of the nest this time and the fences for the fields.

The nests doubled in size while the fences went from an almost useless stat to a slightly more sturdy form similar to what you would see in farms during the 20th and 21st century rural farms. It was the wooden post with two log connecting type fences. It was also much sturdier and wouldn’t fall as easily.

The increased nest size, all it could do was hold more eggs and didn’t increase their speed. With the sufficient size, the last upgrade was more easily completed which was the separate Nest units. The nests would more likely to be called a nursery in this state now as each demon would know which ‘nest’ unit they laid their eggs in.

Akor got curious about the appearance after it was fully upgraded and crawled inside and looked around.

“This looks like a chicken coop.” He said after looking around the completed level 1 nest.

After confirming the state of both upgraded facilities, as well as their stats to see if there were changes, which the nest had a change as the demons now had some faint trace of familial recognition, he went to complete the nest upgrade, the village walls.

Demon Management

Demon Towns

Town Management

Stone

264 Unit

Wood

145 Units

Number of Buildings

Village Walls

Reinforce Wall

Requirements:

Wood 40 units

Upgrade

With a single upgrade, the cost was much higher, that said, looking at the remaining wood he had, it felt some distress at how fast it was going. He didn’t see any large forests near him.

That said he remembered a specific research subject for the Forester class, it was a class for the people who plant and care for trees and in some cases, as time passes, they might even plant an entire forest given time. They are the people who maintain the necessary balance between lumber cutting and reforestation.

This short weed covered mountain did not have wood to even start planting but this was a game, the fact that weeds would merge into wooden logs just shows how much of a game it was.

He pressed the upgrade and a pile of 40 logs appeared and the minion quest worth 30 exp.

The price was high for too low a reward, in his opinion but he knew that demons received only 50% of the true reward meaning this quest cost 60 exp.

He watched the three imps work to move the logs which were absorbed by the village ‘wall’ and after all the wood was absorbed, the imps danced around each section and they went from a shitty falling apart fence to a much more solid wooden fence similar to the fields but it had two extra legs forming an X in the center and more wooden posts along the structure making the fence much sturdier.

The size didn’t expand though but he didn’t mind since it was expected, most likely only after an official level up the size would change. Even calling this a wall was an insult to other villages.

He pulled up the window of the descriptions of the current buildings in the village.

Building Overview

Lord’s home

The Lord’s house, only available in the capital city of a Demon Lord. It is the administrative center of all his land and were his power concentrates and is the only place with the Demon Heart inside the building.

Level 2 Upgrade condition: Village wall, 5 fields, 5 Demon Hut, all upgrades complete.

Village wall

Current Level 1 wall: a small wooden fence which works to just slightly impede invaders for a short while.

+3 Village Security

Demon Hut (imp)

The home for Demon (Imp), each house can contain 10 individuals who mostly don’t care how they sleep and just sleep in piles.

Demon Nest (Imp)

The nest of Demon (Imp), it is the location which incubates the eggs of the demons. The nests have separate nest units which have given the imps a faint trace of familial recognition

Spawn 1.2 Imp every 12 hours.

Wild Fruit Field

A simple rough field meant to raise wild mountain bush to collect wild fruits.

1.2 unit every day per field.

Looking at the descriptions, all that was left was the Demon Hut and the Lord’s house.

Demon Management

Demon Towns

Town Management

Stone

264 Unit

Wood

105 Units

Number of Buildings

Demon Hut (Imp)

Increased Size

Requirements:

Wood 20 units

Upgrade

Straw Flooring

Requirements:

Wood 10 units

Upgrade

Straw Bed

Requirement:

Wood 30 units

Upgrade

Demon Management

Demon Towns

Town Management

Stone

264 Unit

Wood

105 Units

Number of Buildings

Lord’s House

First floor house

Requirements:

Wood 100 units

Upgrade

Straw Flooring

Requirements:

Wood 10 units

Upgrade

Basement Floor Reinforcement

Requirement:

Stone 20 units Wood 30 units

Upgrade

Demon Heart Stone pedestal

Requirements

Stone 80 units

Upgrade

Looking at the upgrades, he was confused by the Lord’s house upgrades. He decided to touch the upgrades to see if there was a description. To his surprise there was.

Upgrades

Lord’s House

First Floor House

The mound covering the cavern of the Demon Heart is a perfect place to build a home. This space would form some spaces for administrative job zones as well as a place to store paper scrolls and books.

Straw Flooring

Covers the floor of the basement floor with straw to make the house warmer.

Basement Floor Reinforcement

The rough walls are dug out and reinforced with wooden logs to hold the roof improving the basement and first floor stability. This also permits the basement floor to be further developed and divided into rooms.

Demon Heart Stone Pedestal

A special stone pedestal, it helps support the Demon Heart in the capital city and improves the flow of mana in the Mana spring making it more stable. Its building method is unknown but demon minions can build it by instinct upon being ordered.

+1 to all physical stats of the Demon Lord

The last upgrade drew in his eyes making his desires very clear. He could gain one more stat point for this demon heart making his little heart pump harder.

“The upgrade is made of stone so i don’t need to worry about wood!” He said.

Any player desires his own stats to grow with extra buff stats. To gain extra stats beyond the basic points is the general game play plan for all people who wanted to be ‘more than the competition’.

Because Akor wanted to survive off kingdom building, he also needed to have high stats since he was a demon lord so he instantly punched the Demon Heart Stone pedestal.

He called all the imps to build it quick. The upgrade was 50 points, shockingly, and they all came running and carried in the units of stone. It took close to half an hour to move it all and they began to dance around it.

The many large rocks shined and began to center under the demon heart and slowly formed a large stone ‘well’ that was rather deep.

As it fully formed, small sparkling blue lights began to gather within it and slowly climb up into the demon heart. The flow was much higher then before and the connection flowed into the heart and then into Akor.

When it entered his chest, he felt intense pain. “AH!” he shouted and collapsed but as his Str, Agi, Dex and Con increased each by 1 point his body. His body began to increase in size but his muscles weren’t left behind. The four points added up evenly and made his development more even compared to the imps.

When the pain stopped he looked at himself and stood up feeling off balance after getting, somewhat, used to the previous size. His current size was that of a one and a half year old human.

His small fingers hand grown and were more nimble but just comparable to a child. His arms and legs were also longer and his feet’s fingers had formed more. As for muscles, they were not that of a child so he only looked like a red skinned child with a pair of horns.

“These initial changes are painful, will it always be like this?” he asked with a frown.

He didn’t know but feeling the development was a good thing, he would soon be able to control his body enough that he could survive on his own power.

He continued the upgrades and did the basement floor and Straw flooring next. The basement expanded greatly and gained lots of wooden support beams and wall supports which would allow Akor to choose where to build a wall between them.

When he looked at the time, he let his Imps go work, eat or whatever they were doing and wanted to do before going to lay down in a small straw pile which happened to be his bed. He touched a few sections of wooden pillars and saw the game element as roughly built wooden walls form in that section and he made a small room with a single door and fell asleep.

Lucas opened his eyes as he logged off after falling asleep in the game and looked at the time. With a typical 1:4 time dilution that VR games have had for century, he had only played for half a day and only 3 hours passed.

Even so, his stomach growled, “Did i turn on game feedback or something?” he asked and got up and felt a bit fore soreness. He wasn’t someone who would use something as needless as feedback system as it would waste his nutrients faster.

He stood up and went to eat another cup of noodles while going to make sure that the system was not on for this game.

“Where is it…” He said but couldn’t find it and just sighed and shook his head.

When he reached his cupboard he opened it and froze. “Crap…” He cursed as he saw the cupboard empty.

He looked at the ground and sighed before scratching his head. “Guess i should clean up and go to the mart.” He said and began to pick up the cups and threw them in a recycle trash deposit.

After cleaning up, poorly, he checked his balance and sighed as he saw he only had about $200 left in his account.

“I hope i can start making money soon or i won’t survive past a month.” He said.

He picked up a dirty coat and put it on before opening the doors. Smelling the stinky outside air he went back inside and put a mask on and left to go to the go to the corner store, SmartMart.

***

Looking out at the dry badlands around her, a small child sized demon lord sighed as she regretted choosing the Hellish Badlands as her starting area. Although she gained a lot of stats points for her choice, the half a day of development was hard pressed. Even when a large section of land was cleared out for wood and stone, there was barely 100 wood gathered with much more wood.

Also, the closest water source was a pool of water nearly 1 km away and there was often monsters there making it dangerous and caused food production to slow down by double, meaning 1 unit every 2 days.

She had needed to hunt from the get go and hunted some low leveled Badland Hares for meat and bone to try and make Bone meal. Thanks to the bone meal, she balanced out the lack of water with fertilizer.

“I should have chosen the other path.” She said but could no longer regret.

She finished setting up the village walls and making their upgrade before logging off.

She was in a moderate home and was very pretty. She felt her stomach growl and went to eat. She took her phone and saw a message.

“Hm? What’s this…” She said and pressed it.

To Demon Lord Ulra

Greetings young demon lord,

I am the Vice CEO of Second Life INC,

Because of a recent set of events pertaining to the appearance of many lords, which was unaccounted for so early, we have decided to do a special project with the lords. If possible, please reply if you agree to having a meeting tomorrow, Saturday the 18th of June.

@Edna W.

“A meeting?” She muttered before shrugging. “I guess i could go. If its a project then i could get a contract… or maybe they are hiring.” She said.

She smiled and ran off to inform her parents and replied to the email.

One by one they replied yet Lucas was focused on which noodles were tastier among the not so tasty meals he survived on.

He only saw the message after returning when he checked his inbox incase something happened, in this case, a game event.

He laid on his bed before replying simply “Okay.”

All the replies were the same, the company would send a car to pick them up the following day.

Lucas did not want to waste the rest of the day and logged in with his character sleeping and slept all the way until morning in game and woke up to two new imps that he would need to train up but this was a good improvement since he could do more work and he now had 5 free imps and could hunt one of the goats with more safety.

He made crude clubs for three of them and a crude sling for one of the imps. The last two would be there to protect him from the goat and grab the horns in case they come at him again.

He left the two dumb imps to farm with one smarter one leading them from the fifth field and took the other 5 to go hunt.