“Ahahahaha! This kid is funny!” a voice sounded in a cloudy space.

Slowly a light shined and those clouds gathered slowly forming a large platform before slowly building a huge hall.

Glowing figures began to appear and there was one dwarf rolling on the ground. On the outer area of the all were filled with glowing orbs.

“Can you stop that!?” One of the people grit her teeth as she looked at the dwarf. She had features of a devil race.

“Oh come on, it’s funny. You also shouldn’t let your emotions be taken over by the system programed memories.” The dwarf said getting up.

The people gathered were non other then the game AI’s who played the game gods while the glowing orbs are all the sleeping gods, or damaged AI which were here to be restored.

A few elven women were standing next to one orb. “It seems the Pyarus program settings have begun to form from the ingame memory. The data bits have also begun to flow into the AI and are slowly adapting the Pyarus program and memories to this AI.” she said.

The female demon clicked her tongue, “I don’t like the kid.” She said.

“Oh come on, this was the original intent of the game.” one of the other gods said.

“That is true but none of you would accept being insulted like he did.” the female demon said.

“Edite, you all made the choice to go with only the ‘evil’ gods memories, if you had split half and half, your race would be much more unique than the brutish cliche version of demons you all made.” the dwarf said.

The demon gods were all irritated hearing that but it was indeed true, they took up the memories and avatar bodies of the gods so their enmity towards the ‘righteous’ gods were equal to what it was before and sometimes the AI’s would act on the impulse.

“If i could raze that kid’s nation i would have already done so.” one of the demon gods said.

“And that is why we installed so many safeguards into the lord class. From the tutorial zone to the limited invasion proportion and even the tutorial end territory move, all of it was to protect the fairness of the game.” the human god of wisdom said.

“Bookworm, don’t try to act all smart with us!” Edite shouted.

He snorted, “I personally cannot wait for Pyarus to awaken, i will have another study companion to spend my time with. It is better to have such companions than muscle heads.” he said.

Edite ground her teeth, “So why did we gather here anyway!?” she said through grit teeth.

“It’s because of the arrangement we made. Once the 1st sleeping god quest for awakening a god comes out, we are to arrange for tribes in all races to awaken the gods who are not ‘picked’.” the human god said.

“Wasn’t there a deadline? Like a month or something?” one of the animal gods asked.

“Yes, that time would be the time it takes for their research to reach God Recognition after researching basic skills and classes.” the elven goddess said.

“Oh.” the demons said.

“So what exactly do we have to do?” one of the other gods.

“We need to choose proper ‘settings’ for the break off of a number of individuals.” another god said.

“That is quite a serious matter in some races.” Edite said.

“Yes, in particular demons.” Another demon god said crossing his arms.

“Hmm, for demons, i feel either a rebellion or a coup setting would fit the best.” the human wisdom god said.

“That would benefit the demon lords the most.” Edite said.

“Of course, you are the only race which has all gods hunting anyone who hunts anyone that doesn’t pray to the active gods so that much is obvious.” the human wisdom god replied.

The demon gods clicked their tongues at the disorder that would consume their race in the coming years but it did not matter to them.

The other gods began to discuss different matters. Animals were the easiest though their research growth was the hardest since they needed to evolve a lot first to reach humanoid state to begin religious practices.

Monsters came right after before the sentient races and the hardest race was the demons because they had to make sure to cause huge waves at the center of the Hellish badlands where all the Dark lords lived. These could also become event quests for players to choose sides on the spur of the moment and then later help rebuild the land of the demon kind.

In some cases it was war of two lords, others was a coup and some were rebellions, they were all produced and placed in very talented individuals who began to move and quickly build power to break the cities of the dark lords.

Just from the setup, demons were indeed the most complicated race without the righteous gods to balance the race which should have been one of the sentient races.

***

Following the start of the quest, Akor kept teaching the imps and the 7 imps he picked out eventually learned the Writing and math skills. Whenever they learned the skill, they produced a small little light which floated up which was faith.

By the time they had learned both skills he also got a prompt which finally signaled the architect class. It unlocked the Architecture skill, the class and the building related to it, the Architect hut.

It required 115 units of wood but it just needed 1 building.

He put it down and lead the construction to speed up the construction.

It wasn’t that slow of a construction like the altar but it still took 10 minutes after the material was gathered but as soon as it finished a special notice appeared.

Update

You have built a special class building. You use the Architect house to research Support and Building research.

The effect was really great and would greatly help Akor. Now he could leave building research to the architects while the lord’s house could focus on craft and combat.

When the building was complete, he lead the two imps he had been training to be architects and had them get the class.

They fell into the trance but at the same time, they began to release faith for Pyarus for gaining the class.

With the requirements complete, he could finally upgrade the village walls.

He opened the towns management window and pressed upgrade for the village walls.

Different from research, upgrades are instant as long as the requirements are met.

When he upgraded, the map appeared and it showed the village walls expanded into palisade style but it was very poorly organized like you would see in walls to ward against rushing herds of creatures. The wall went up to 2 meters and was four times in perimeter but it asked if he wanted to further expand it by adding more wood.

Looking at the size, he actually did add wood and increased it to a decent size to build a village inside.

He accepted and the wood was instantly discounted and the fence shined as it was sucked into the ground before the ground began to shake as logs of wood began to form out of the ground around the entire village’s buildings including the fields.

The walls were rough but they were many times better and would protect better against wild beasts.

“Alright, this seems a good time as any to start expanding.” Akor said with a smile and set off to prepare the capture tools to imprison the creatures at the other mana springs. The specific preparation was actually several large and small wooden cage.

The reason was simple, just like the demons, he would not kill the monsters. He didn’t plan to kill anything until he pretty much full sets up the basis for his kingdom, more or less.

The cages were, obviously, crude and made with pieces of thin logs and rope to transport anything that they catch back. They couldn’t achieve proper traps without trap making skills which can be found in classes like rogue, slaver, Hunter and several others but their type of traps are each different.

He was planning on using the simple tamer tools he had which was the lasso and bolas to trap whatever it is that is guarding the spring. With a party of around 30 imps, there is no way anything in low numbers will be able to fully defend itself against so many people trying to trap them.

He gathered most of the imps, made pellets, made sure the ropes were in good enough condition, the knots were tight enough, and the lassos were properly open and tied.

The preparations lasted about an hour while Valring and the two Architect were each given a research project. Valring began researching the Blacksmith skill and class research while the architects were left to study the scribe class.

Akor would personally lead the imps because he needed to plant the demon heart anyway and since he wasn’t killing, he didn’t need to worry about gaining exp.

He was excited about getting the extra stat buff though.

He brought with him 30 imps leaving behind those that had jobs to do.

Outside of the village, he closed his eyes and felt for the tug on his horns. They soon appeared like every time they did when he thought of them. The more time he stood still the stronger they got and the more of them were revealed by distance. He would always feel three of them but no more, most likely being too far.

Taking that into consideration he turned to the closest spring and lead his minions. The cages he made were stored in the 25 slot inventory that each player has.

The distance, by foot, is quite far, being around 15 km, and it was on a much taller mountain. The pull drew Akor towards a cave a quarter of the way up the mountain that was on a relatively flatish space, more or less.

Akor was on guard and held a wooden shield for himself while the vanguards had weapons and shields, working in pairs.

“Quietly now.” He said and they began to enter the cave.

It was unexpectedly lighter than he expected but that was because demons were creatures of the dark side and can naturally see in the dark.

They walked in and soon they entered a quite large cavern with many broken stalagmites on the ceiling. The ground also had many claw marks clearly showing something was here.

Akor looked around and signalled for the demons to stay on alert and they all started to take their capture tools out.

After a short while, they started to walk in and going deeper. The pull on Akor’s horn was getting stronger as they walked and soon the cavern opened even more and had three stone pillars spread in the room with some small pools of runoff water from the cave ceiling.

Akor finally got a look at the resident of this place.

With a tiger body, monkey head and a snake as a tail, it was one of the famous chimera monsters in japanese folklore, the Nue.

[(Miniboss) Juvenile Nue Level 5] was over its head. Its size was that of an adult tiger showing a bit of how intimidating a fully grown Nue would be.

It was asleep in the center of the cavern room which also happens to be where the mana spring is.

Akor looked at it with a frown as he saw that title of miniboss. From logic, a common monster was more or less equal to a common player, miniboss are similar to a somewhat skilled person in real life who brings real life skills to play, boss monsters are already in the expert league, above that is the so called legendary realm were the Pro gamers play in.

Akor himself isn’t a great fighter and has always lived and played by controlling troops more. His own fighting ability is actually much lower, despite being a superhuman in real life.

Still, true to his developed tactics, he decided that he would need to start by beating it up but he didn’t know how it would react or its stats. Higher grade monsters always have extra stats over their level plus abilities to buff that. The goats are a great example of an animal which can buff itself with skills. As for a miniboss, it would have passive buffs.

He was most worried about the tail. Snakes in chimera are highly poisonous with devastating poison gas or spit attacks as well as defending the blind spots of the main body.

“The tail has to be restrained first.” he thought.

He divided the catchers to the left and right while preparing the frontliners for battle.

The number was only 10 while the rest went to the sides to be able to hold the ropes. They would need to survive until the Nue was restrained enough.

Now was the problem of was to catch it. A tiger is a strength beast, a snake and monkey are speed based. Akor wasn’t sure about their speed. Of course, there is no way it can be over 20 at this point. At most this thing will be as fast as a tiger, probably between 20-30 km per hour.

“Plan A is always going to be a sneak attack.” Akor thought as he made a sign to the capture groups and they quickly began to move.

The Bolas and lasso were twirled and the lasso were thrown at once. As expected of any special monster, it was always alert even when sleeping.

When the lasso reached 5 meters, its eyes bolted open and it jumped away. The ropes all hit empty air while the Nue roared with glowing red eyes.

WOO! WOO! WOO!

A flurry of wildly flying bolas came flying next and the Nue rushed towards the right group through the many capture tools.

“Shoot!” Akor ordered.

Sling users suddenly threw rocks pelting the Nue making it aim towards their group at once with red glowing eyes.

It roared in anger as it stopped and when it did the snake tail hissed as one of the bolas hit it and wrapped its long body but it did nothing besides shake itself.

The Nue rushed at the frontliner group as planned.

“Shields!” Akor said and five imps took wooden shields and stood in front.

The capture groups all grabbed their fallen Bolas and lasso and turned.

This was a simple tactic he had explained, when it rushed, the imps would stop it with shields and it was when they were to throw the trap tools.

That said, one slightly dumber imp threw the bolas and the snake was looking forward while its head was swelling and unexpectedly, the capture tool flew perfectly into the two hind legs.

When they suddenly tightened the Nue tripped, fell and flipped over with the heavy tiger body landing on the snake.

The snake was squished and suddenly vomited a green venom spit which it had been preparing to fire and unexpectedly got it on the main body.

Of course, every creature has antibodies against their own poison but it isn’t a good feeling.

ROAR!

The Nue was incredibly pissed of as it aimed to rip the bolas apart when five lasso flew onto its body and four of them perfectly latched on.

The two groups merged and with four out of five, they split into groups of three to hold each rope tight.

HISS!

The snake got out from under the tiger body as it began to thrash and hissed as it swelled again.

It was aiming for the ropes.

“Stop the snake!” Akor shouted but it was too late as it spewed out a toxic liquid over the ropes which began to release smoke.

This was the unpredictable part about monsters, their abilities were plenty unique and not all solutions that worked on one creature would work on another.

Although the order was late, several ropes and bolas all got thrown at the Nue again aiming for the snake.

The aiming wasn’t the best of course but it had further restrained the Nue making it that even if the other ropes were torn it wouldn’t escape.

“Jump on it and restrain the tail!” Akor ordered.

“Rah!” the free imps shouted and rushed the beast.

The snake hissed but the frontliner imps arrived and grabbed pretty much every inch of its body while the capture group arrived with ropes and began to tie of the legs and of the Nue.

They passed the ropes on the right hind leg and then around the left leg before tightening the binding and fully restricting the back legs.

As for the front legs, he began that and tied the right leg but the body was on its right size with the left leg trapped.

They started to flip it and as soon as the leg was released the Nue roared and began to swing it’s free paw.

It slammed several imps as they were about to start making the knot.

The imps went flying a few meters and the paw flew at the ropes and demons around it and started to knock everything. It used its paw to claw the rope and finally it chomped on the ropes on its right hand.

“Stop it!” Akor shouted.

The imps moved to try and restrain it but with the front claws it had more movement and slashed out bashing the incoming imps and then it bit into the side of one of the imps on its tail.

It screamed in pain and it swung it around while clawing at the others.

Eventually the top of the snake got loose and it suddenly curled and reached the nearest imp’s hands and bit.

The imp turned pale and let go and the attack caused the rest to fearfully let go and distance themselves.

The one bit howled and its HP dropped quickly with poison damage.

Akor looked at it and at that time, all his plans went to dust as the snake breathed in heavily and released its toxic venom on all the ropes but this time it was purple colored.

The Nue’s HP dropped by 50%, most likely a last ditch skill at the cost of HP. The ropes tying it up, shockingly, began to melt before their naked eye and they all had to distance themselves because the venom was extremely corrosive.

ROAR!

The Nue roared in rage.

Akor on the other hand felt pain that this didn’t go wrong and sighed. “Keep your distance, pull your weapons and get ready to kill it!” Akor said with some regret since he didn’t want it to lead to this but it wasn’t in his luck for this to happen.

[Nue Level 5 75/150]

With 15 constitution it was going to be a long fight.

Akor told some imps to remove very injured incapacitated imps and began to order the others. The rest pulled out clubs while a few Akor made pull out shields.

“Shoot the pellets!” Akor ordered.

A wave of rock pellets were shot out but the Nue didn’t even flinch and took five rocks.

[Nue Level 5 70/150]

The damage was much lower than the constitution and could only take 1 damage.

The pellets irritated the Nue and it surged towards the shield wall and slammed into it for real this time and it knocked all the imps down but they did stop it for a short while.

The imps surged again but the snake was alert and hissed and attacked trying to bite the imps but the imps weren’t so stupid as to allow themselves to be attacked with such a one-hit kill type attack. No matter how stupid they were, they still had instincts for danger and know how to jump away from danger like any other creature with even a bit of sense for self preservation.

Akor frowned when he saw the snake keeping the imps away allowing the Nue to start moving.

What happened the next second was very unexpected as a single lasso flew out even though all of the others had been destroyed and it very strangely and accurately flew to the head.

At the same time, the Nue roared and as a result, the rope was pulled straight to the back of it's opened mouth just behind its teeth making it impossible to bite through.

The rope came too suddenly after they were all broken and there were too many imps to see where it came from even with the snake defending the back.

HISS!

The snake angrily hissed as it aimed to cut the rope but like before it was dogpiled by five imps with one grabbing just behind the head.

Following the restraining of the two heads the dogpile extended to the entire body as ten club wielding imps rushed forward and smashed down.

Just like the pellets, the damage was 1 but with almost a dozen imps pounding while several held the snake tail firmly and the rope in the mouth restrained the front, it roared and swung wildly before trying to shake off the ones on its tail while batting the nearby ones in it’s berserk rage.

It even tried rolling to get the ones on the tail off but because the imps greatly outnumbered it they had many rounds of imps to jump on it to beat it up slowly chipping its hp down no matter how many were beaten away.

It goes without saying that killing was an easier path for imps which had a sort of ‘style’ of battle when in large groups. Even though Akor gave no orders, because of the little tricks they were taught, they somewhat learned to deal with this monster themselves and were adapting slowly despite some actually being killed and others injured.

It was actually rare to find an imp without some damage on them.

That said, the Nue could no longer hold it and finally it collapsed.

Battle Report

Your nameless minion has killed Nue Level 5 and gained 250 exp

You have gained 62.5 exp

Your command skill has leveled up to level 2

Your command skill has leveled up to level 3

Your attack order has leveled up to level 2

Akor sighed when he saw the amount of exp he and one of his minions got. It was a level 3 minion that got it as well because if it was a level 1 minion who killed it, it would have instantly leveled up while level 2 and 3 needed much more exp to level up.

Since Akor could do nothing about it, he put it behind him and walked to the corpse to see if the loot was there and surprisingly it was not making him surprised and excited as he remembered that equipment drops caused the loots from dropping making it turn into a treasure chest.

He waited excited and soon the body turned into a treasure chest which he went and opened.

Loot

Nue Snake tail poison x1

Nue pelt x1

Nue Monkey fang x2

Nue tiger meat x4

Nue Snakeskin Quiver

Akor took each thing out and eventually he found the equipment and froze with shock as he pulled out a quiver.

“Why a quiver?!” Akor said shocked and frankly disappointed before looking at the item description in hopes of getting some answers.

Nue Snakeskin Quiver

High quality

The Nue was said to be a demon or spirit creature which once cursed a powerful human emperor almost leading to his death but a special arrow was forged and given to a master archer to shoot and killed it in one shot. Since then, the Nue has had a tight relationship with arrows.

Quiver applies a minor poison buff to arrows stored inside.

Reading the information he was still completely confused but the actual effect of the quiver was actually quite good if not for the fact that he couldn’t kill at this moment and that archery wasn’t possible since they needed bows and arrows which lacked.

“I guess the equipment isn’t bad.” He said and saw the body vanish.

Finally the mana spring was fully safe making him feel better.

At that moment, he felt a very strong pull from the mana spring making him think the spring was calling him. He followed the tugging and stood where the Nue was sleeping. The pulling force was a bit stronger then the first which proved it was a small medium mana pool. He smiled at this, “Demon Heart.” He said.

Once more a demon heart appeared and started to gather the mana but different from last time, a wave burst through the ground like waves. Loose rocks and spiky stones began to melt into the rocks while the rough uneven floor began to smooth out and the walls straighten up as if it was dug out by hand.

The rough pillars smoothed out and became smaller at the base and bigger at the middle forming a more equal pillar but still looked like rock.

Lastly the ceiling’s stalagmites all melted into the ceiling no longer leaving spiky and dangerous things which could lead to injury and damage later on.

You have planted a Demon Heart, what would you like to name this village?

Akor gave a small look around and began to think, “This is a cave village… if we include the outside area, this would be a mining town. This mountain will probably be our initial stone, copper, silver and gold sources and maybe even iron. If that is the case then the name should be obvious.” Akor thought. “The name is Prosperity.” he said.

Do you wish to name this village ‘Prosperity’?

Yes

No

“Yes.” Akor said.

This village is now known as Prosperity

Basic buildings will now be formed.

A wave of mana swept out and slowly three buildings formed. Different from the capital where the demon heart is located under the lord’s house, the secondary villages have it at the center of the village.

The two smaller buildings were, of course, Demon Nest (imp) and Demon Hut (Imp), both level 2 and were probably gifts from the system to make sure there was a minimum population. The third building he was curious about but he didn’t have time to look at it as mana began to flow out of the ground and into the demon heart and form a link with Akor.

“AH!” he shouted.

Different from the first one, his head felt like it was being drilled into and his horns were under a massive pressure as well as his body.

A small mana pool will give 1 or 2 stat points but a small-medium mana pool gives between 3-5 for physical stats but the transition was much more painful than system stat points.

Akor felt his body cracking and felt like he would explode under this kind of pressure but soon his body began to grow at an accelerated rate to adapt to the power.

Different from the awakening, this time he had to face the pain this time. It lasted just around a minute before it weakened but his muscles were spasming.

He stood up and was amazed at his own physical condition. He now looked like a teen now. He was almost his true size but his muscles were more defined or even a bit bulkier than his natural appearance. He opened his status to see the increase.

Status

Name:

Akor

Race:

Demon Lord

Class:

Demon Lord

Race Tier:

Tier 1

Level:

2

Exp:

63.7/500

Hp:

90/90 hp

Mp:

120/120 Mp

HP regen

45 hp/m

Mp regen

60 mp/m

Stat points

0

Strength:

1 (7)

Wisdom:

10 (2)

Agility:

1 (5)

Intelligence:

10 (2)

Constitution:

2 (7)

Dexterity:

6 (6)

Charisma:

2 (10)

After looking he understood why, “So it was 3-5 stat points for physical stats, probably 5-7 charisma and 2 for mental stats. My stats are pretty much equal to an average human now.” He said and looked at the, now, developed body which was no longer difficult to control like before. He was no longer an infant and would now be able to fight on his own.

He turned to the last building and went to examine it.

Tutorial Guide

Congratulations on making your first secondary village. This is the mayor’s house. Different from a lord, mayors are a smarter or stronger demon placed by a lord to command a village. They help administrate your village but if they aren’t too smart they will follow demon tendencies and live off hunting. A village can remain without a mayor and the lord will manage it himself/herself through the capital but it would raise the amount of work done by the lord to micromanage each village owned.

The tutorial easily cleared up his doubts, Akor didn’t place any mayor for now. It wasn’t too much of a hassle to manage two villages at this time. What is more, he found that the mayor’s house was like the lord’s house and could research as well but there was restrictions. It could only be research of the same tier grade as the building itself, meaning tier 1.

This didn’t really matter that much thought because it would be a long time before he gets everything to Tier 2, he actually didn’t know when that would happen in fact since there was no explanation between tier and levels.

Just as Akor turned around and exit the village, he heard the imps howling in pain and ran outside and saw the imps.

They were all writhing in pain but their bodies were their muscles worming about as if worms had invaded their bodies.

Their bodies grew a small bit and small horn points grew on their head. After a small moment, they all collapsed exhausted.

Akor was shocked and frowned before pulling up the stats of one of the level 2 imps.

Status

Name:

Race:

Demon (Imp)

Class:

None

Race Tier:

Tier 1

Level:

2

Exp

0/100

Hp:

40/40 hp

Mp:

70/70 Mp

HP regen

15 hp/m

Mp regen

5 mp/m

Stat points

0

Strength:

2 (1)

Wisdom:

0 (1)

Agility:

2 (1)

Intelligence:

5 (2)

Constitution:

2 (1)

Dexterity:

2 (1)

Charisma:

0

Akor was shocked that his minions gained a tiny buff as well. He didn’t expect them to gain something, what is more is that they even got wisdom buff just like him but their physical buff was much lower and no charisma.

Upon learning this, Akor found that he felt that it would very useful to get all the nearby villages, it would definitely increase the security of village with the minions gaining a smaller buff. This was a very good thing to focus on in the next few days.

Akor finally opened up the town management and rubbed his chin.

“You all, go and gather wood.” he ordered the minions so that he could leave a few fields complete outside before returning.

The imps slowly got up and went to complete his orders while he walked around to explore the surroundings.