Leon

I can’t help but grimace as I watch the Emperor holding the incredibly annoying mayor by the throat in the air, with his feet floating a few meters above the ground.

Of course, the Vampires would have to visit at the same time as the mayor, who is very openly against any Demonic Race. And of course the man had to make a scene while there was a couple of Tier 7s standing guard at the dungeon.

I stare at the events going on, pondering for a few seconds if I should do something, only to glance at Kat – who seems to be ignoring the mayor’s situation. So I take a page from her book and turn away from the obvious distress of the man and his pleading face to instead continue talking to the Prince in front of me.

Maybe this will make him stop causing me trouble. Assuming he survives this of course.

And considering the screams I hear as soon as I turn away from him, I highly doubt he will.

“I think we can come to an agreement on the embassy,” I tell the Prince while ignoring the death screams behind me. “Would you like to come discuss it in my office?”

It’s a little surprising that they actually wanted an embassy, especially considering how they’ve had two Emperors sitting in my nation all this time, but it would help to have relations with the Empire of Eternal Night. And it doesn’t hurt knowing that the empire is neighbors to the Storm Elemental Kingdom, which is a major contributor for the lightning element orb market.

“I’m glad to see that you’re a reasonable leader, Sir Leon,” the Prince says while also ignoring the now-dead mayor behind us. He then begins to walk with me back towards my manor, and just a few seconds later, I feel the aura of the Emperor vanishing again as he hides it again.

Guess the Emperor only showed up because of the mayor’s extremely derogatory comments about the Vampires. Which is a little surprising, considering the number of derogatory comments the mayor has said over the past few days – before the other Vampires arrived. Although none of those were aimed at the Vampires. They were aimed at the Orcs instead.

I would’ve expected them to be used to that sort of thing and just ignore it, but I guess not.

Fenrir

About a week later

I stare at the tiny black orb floating in the air. It looks a lot like a sphere made out of the border of a portal, with no actual other end of the portal.

“You finally made one?” Dawn asks me while taking her attention away from Fang’s battle with a bunch of intruders. “That didn’t take as long as I’d expected it would.”

“Yeah,” I mutter without taking my focus off of the orb. “It took way too much mana though. And I almost failed more times than I can count.”

The process was surprisingly simple, but it was also incredibly difficult at the same time. To the point that I had to push through in making it, otherwise I would’ve just wasted the mana I used in it and needed to restart the process entirely.

Overall, I needed to create a portal within an enclosed enchantment. Which in and of itself was easy, but throughout the entire process it felt like something was trying to explode from it.

“Anyways, now that I can make these, we can go through with the trades with the Vampires,” I add with a mental sigh.

That work will be worth it once I get those orbs. Maybe they might even let me reach CL 12 in a few months?

My thoughts come to a halt as I sense something strange entering my dungeon’s territory within the void. When I turn my focus on it, I find some strange sort of fish entering my territory. Or at least I think it’s a fish. The creature has the shape of a snake, but the gills and body parts of a fish, with its body spanning several meters in length. I also notice some strange current of black lightning running across its body.

“Is that a void eel?” Dawn mutters.

That’s not what I’m-

She cuts my thoughts off as she notices the oddity as well and says, “Wait a second…”

For some reason the void eel – as Dawn calls it – has some sort of sphere filling up its entire mouth. A sphere that’s giving off a powerful wave of void energy, most of which the eel is absorbing.

“Go kill that thing and grab that orb,” I tell the two sernines I have standing near it.

As soon as the two sernines get close to the eel, the creature’s void electricity grows stronger before flying out to shock the sernines, only for it to only barely damage the sernine’s scales. Which shows off another effect of my latest monster’s that I didn’t know about before. That is has a resistance to the void element.

I wonder if that is purely for the void element, or also for other elements?

Anyways, the eel quickly tries to get away, but since the sernines specialize in speed and the eel itself seems to be slowed down by the very large orb in its mouth, my monsters catch it quickly enough and tear it apart. One of my sernines then grabs the orb and rushes through my dungeon to bring it directly to my core.

“Is that,” I mutter while staring at the orb and releasing several pulses of black light from my orb out of my excitement, “what I think it is?

“Yep,” Dawn says after appearing in my core room, “that is a naturally formed orb of the void element.”

An orb formed purely from a high concentration of an element. Which in this case is the void element.

These naturally formed ones are a lot more efficient and hold a much higher amount of void element World Energy than the non-natural ones. So this orb will be a large push forward in my cultivation.

Although some of it was already used up by that eel… speaking of which, I also got that eel’s pattern. Which is a plus as well.

Time to start cultivating some more.