Chapter 48: Occupation and Rapid Growth

Many dwarves wavered. But only wavered. A few hours ago they had been people of a civilized world, and morals and honor still bound them. No one would sell his soul easily.

Until...

"Oh~"

The Taskmaster saw it, and his smile widened.

"I almost forgot to mention."

"Only the first to step forward will enjoy such treatment. Everyone else will be a plain slave... and food!"

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The snake-tailed Taskmaster mimicked a clock, watching the dwarves with excitement.

At last, the first man to sell his soul stepped out.

Bilkin.

He was about to become the first to sign a soul contract with a demon.

---

Once the Taskmaster Demons took over the paperwork, Koda’s occupation of Grimstone quickly began to bear fruit.

"Great lord, I have gathered 1.2 tons of gold from Grimstone, four tons of stone, and wood and grain in the following amounts..."

"My lord, after a few small rounds of selection, the number who will become our demon slaves is 1,200..."

"After the takeover, we found a great many suits of armor and weapons across the town, including 247 battered weapons, and ordinary ones numbering..."

"We found three mines still in use within the town’s borders, and mining has officially begun..."

"With help from a dwarf traitor, we found a treasury hidden beneath the town and pulled a great many jewels out of it."

As the good news kept coming, Koda, seated on the throne, finally relaxed his brow.

’War really is the fastest way to get rich,’ he thought sincerely.

By taking one small town of fewer than two thousand people, he had gained more resources in one stroke than he had gathered over the previous several days combined.

Gold, stone and timber were all vital to building up his territory.

The captured food and the wide farmland mattered even more.

Warriors and subjects needed food to live. Demons of the abyss could endure hunger better than most, but that was no long-term plan. Once their hunger passed a certain point, they would start killing each other without control, and their numbers could fall by more than half. The loss would be far greater than the price of the food.

That was why grain mattered so much, and why it was a problem no lord could ever avoid.

But besides the basic materials, Koda’s greatest gain was not the weapons and armor in the dwarves’ storehouses and shops.

It was the 1,200 demon slaves.

Managed by four Taskmasters, they kept a production efficiency of one hundred and twenty percent with fewer than fifty imps "maintaining order." Compared with the farmers, builders and laborers of other races, that was an outrageous figure.

And it was not even the limit. If Koda increased their rations, or pushed them in crueler ways, their output would rise even higher.

Working the newly won mines, farmland and logging camps, they would feed Koda a steady stream of resources.

That was the real reason Koda had not slaughtered the town as the demons expected after the conquest. It was also why he had not torn down Grimstone’s foundations by force.

Profit, profit, and more profit!

For any lord, the final goal was to widen his rule and grow his army, again and again. With that goal in mind, every existing town and city became a valuable resource. No lord would kill everyone in a city without reason, unless there was a grave feud or a personal grudge.

Even an elven lord, after taking a stronghold held by creatures of darkness, would plunder it thoroughly and pick out those who could become his subjects before he burned it down or purged it.

Subjects and land were the root of a lord’s strength.

It was the same answer Koda had heard from countless lords.

* * *

’Now that I have enough resources, I can slow down the growth of my army for a while and put my effort into building up my territory,’ he thought.

’A more developed territory means better structures and deeper knowledge. And most importantly, only by growing it can I raise more Hatching Pools and widen the war even further.’

At the moment, Koda had two Hatching Pools.

Both were already overworked. They hatched new demons without rest, but as Koda’s reach spread across the land, they could no longer keep up with the losses of his army.

Worse, his main force and labor were imps. However cheap an imp was, it still took up a place in the Hatching Pools.

Koda glanced over his stores. Once he was sure they were plentiful, he pressed his palm to the Dominion Seed and began feeding it the wealth of Grimstone.

But unlike the desperate early days, when every coin counted, this time he fed it enough to grow three stages at once!

The black stone drank greedily. It pulsed once, and the borders of his territory pushed outward.

Third stage.

It pulsed again, and the borders pushed outward once more.

Fourth stage.

Then a third time.

Fifth stage.

The throne poured knowledge into his mind. His Hatching Pools and Abyssal Gates could now number up to five. New basic structures were open to him: the Demon Workshop, the Hell Prison and the Bloodline Corruption Chamber. A new special structure was open as well: the Profane Torch.

His Hatching Pools could now be deepened into a second form.

And his authority as a lord had deepened too. He could now take up new lordly arts.

A fifth-stage territory.

At last, having seized the first-mover advantage, Koda had pulled ahead of every other lord, both in the growth of his territory and in the size of his army.

And that was not all.

With his authority deepened, Koda could finally learn his own lordly arts. Some of them would greatly inspire and strengthen his warriors just by his presence.

Because of that, he would no longer be only the man behind the lines, sitting on a throne and directing his army from afar. He would walk the scorched ground of the war he had made, in person.