NOVEL NEXT Chapter 8: Safe Period Ended
On the matter of the location for the "House of Bones".
This is naturally something that requires consideration.
Skeletons don't need food or water, but they're not perpetual motion machines. It doesn't mean that they have no upkeep whatsoever.
It's just that Undead don't depend on food and water to recover their stamina.
Instead, they need to absorb necromantic energy to recharge.
One of the functions for the House of Bones is to generate necromantic energy. If it's placed too closely, then the chilling atmosphere and having skeletons moving in and out all the time will definitely end up causing mental issues.
The Darkness Ruins is a pretty decent choice.
It is a location with very strong necromantic energies from the start after all.
If the House of Bones were to be constructed there, then it can lower the daily upkeep by a certain amount. Plus, it's not too close nor too far from the altar, so it's just right in terms of distance.
With the House of Bones, he'll be able to summon skeleton soldiers.However, Zhang Nu isn't a skeleton Demon King after all.
For units that don't match his race, there are limitations when summoning them.
Currently, he could summon 100 at most. In the future, if he levels the House of Bones up or he adds in additional necromantic constructs, then this limit can be increased.
The more necromantic buildings he has, the higher the unit limit and quality for his undead units.
This is also one of the points behind base building.
[Skeleton Soldier]. Level 1, normal. Summoning costs 3 Gold!
He didn't imagine that it would be that cheap.
It's cheaper than even the laborers.
Zhang Nu spent all of his remaining 300 gold on this summoning.
A cold wind blew.
A horde of bleached white skeletons crawled out of the House of Bones.
It was very different from their wild counterparts from the Darkness Ruins though.
They didn't have a scrap of disgusting rotten flesh on them. Every one of them were bleached white and complete skeletons, with their weapons being a bone saber.
"Assemble!"
The skeleton soldiers received that order and immediately lined up in orderly rows.
Although they lack the intelligence to do complicated work, they still absolutely follow any orders given. They won't get afraid or tired and they are cheap too.
They're quite suitable to act as cannon fodder on the battlefield or to work as dumb labor.
The House of Bones will generate necromantic energy and that costs an average of 5 gold a day.
But given that this will let it maintain a hundred perfect workers that will never complain or need food or drink, this was so unbelievably cheap that it's practically no different from being free.
Zhang Nu immediately started assigning the work.
From now on, work that requires brains like construction, harvesting, and hunting will be given to the draconian laborers.
As for dumb labor that don't require any skills like chopping wood, quarrying stone or transporting materials, those will all be left to the skeletons to do.
With that, efficiency immediately jumped by quite a bit.
Zhang Nu then sold the portion of the food he had left over.
His second day of pure income from this territory broke through 300 gold.
Now, even if Zhang Nu stopped doing anything and just had his territory continue to develop at the current pace, he'll still be able to keep up with his expenditures, gain a fairly good profit and continue to expand all the while forming a chain reaction of continuous development.
Two days later, Zhang Nu was sitting up on his altar and observing his territory.
The desolate ruins have already had a good portion of it cleared out.
Right now, with the altar in the center, his territory was quickly expanding, with new areas being constantly added.
[Stone walls]. Within the boundary of the stone walls, building toughness +30%.
[Simple warehouse]. It contains a total volume of 500 cubic meters. Normal level 1 materials decay speed -50%!
This warehouse is worth a mention. It can not only store various foods and herbs, it also has refrigeration functionalities, thus slowing down the decay rate of items in it.
This makes it invaluable.
The Chaos Forest is very hot, climate wise.
The vast majority of foodstuff will have a hard time keeping for more than two days.
With this warehouse though, they can be stored for four or five days. This will greatly increase the efficiency of food utilization, thereby creating more value.
Many more buildings are currently being constructed.
Take the house that Zhang Nu had built for himself.
Also the various animal pens for rearing animal livestock.
Right now, Zhang Nu has 150 draconian laborers, 15 draconian soldiers, and 100 skeleton soldiers. This is already a force to be reckoned with.
From the start until now, It has been less than 4 days and Zhang Nu had already managed to create this kind of setup.
If they continue developing at this breakneck speed, then Zhang Nu will soon be able to cover the entirety of the Chaos Forest. From there, he will become an enormous threat to human empires and the human world at large.
Just then, an important message popped up.
[Game announcement: The Demon King safe period has now ended!]
The safe period has ended?!
Zhang Nu was slightly stunned by that message.
Demon Kings and Heroes are opposing factions.
Heroes have the natural ability to sense the existence of Demon Kings. Only after the safe period has ended are the Heroes allowed to start subjugating Demon Kings.
In other words.
From this moment on.
The battle between Demon Kings and Heroes has formally begun.
Zhang Nu felt a bit of pressure.
It was only a few short days.
In his opinion, the safe period really was way too short.
However, Zhang Nu didn't panic.
His territory was developing smoothly.
The area that he chose to descend upon is also a heavily fractured and lawless land.
It's very unlikely for any sort of massive crusade to appear in a place like this.
For a Demon King like him, this is the best and most suitable location to grow and develop.
...
At the same time, outside the Darkness Valley.
In a hidden goblin village.
Several Hero players who were reincarnated as goblins also received that same message.
"The safe period is over?"
"That means we can go kill Demon Kings now?"
"Haha. For the past few days, killing wild monsters really is just way too slow for leveling. Supposedly, killing a Demon King will yield at least hundreds of times the reward!"
T/N: And so we see our first Heroes, and yes, it will turn out exactly how you'd expect.
This also marks the start of our regular schedule from now on. The current plan is a Tues-Thurs-Sat release schedule of 3 chapters per week, and hopefully this will continue until I finish this novel (or I end up running out of raws. Still hoping that more will be out by the time I get that far though).