She sighed.
"This Demon Monarch feels a bit overwhelmed lately," Samael commented. "Why do adventurers always like to torment the Demon Monarchs?"
"Advanced Adventurers like to explore Underground Cities because the Underground Cities built by Demon Race Monarchs contain more Spiritual Energy than ordinary Demon Realm ecosystems. The material quality and loot yields are better, and there’s a chance they might accidentally dig up treasuries, armories, loot vaults, and Divine Era Relics built by the Demon Race Monarchs. In short, as long as they are capable, everyone wants a piece of the pie," Talia explained.
"Since the adventurers keep harassing them, why doesn’t the Demon Monarch just move to the remote Barren Land and hide far away from the Adventurer’s Alliance?" Samael didn’t understand. "If my house was always crawling with cockroaches and other pests, I’d want to move too. But on the map you drew earlier, almost every Underground City is situated right next to adventurer territories, as if they’re afraid of not being harassed by adventurers."
Talia smiled gently. "You still don’t quite understand the Demon Race, Samael. To the Demon Race Monarchs, adventurers are not pests, but livestock in a farm, fish raised in a pond," she said.
"Do you think the Demon Race Monarchs obtained their loot vaults and treasuries by going out and conquering everywhere themselves? Did the Demon Monarchs painstakingly forge all those advanced weapons themselves? Of course not. The loot, wealth, and powerful equipment are all relics of adventurers who died in the Underground City. Accumulated over time, they gradually become massive treasure troves. The corpses and bones of the adventurers are the raw materials for the powerful Undead Creatures under the Demon Monarch’s command, and even more so, they are premium feed that nourishes the Spiritual Ecosystem of the Underground City.
"This is an overt scheme of the highest order, designed for checks and balances. Both sides have their own agendas. The Demon Race Monarchs lay the benefits out in plain sight, yet bury the lethal risks deep within the perilous underground ecosystem. The adventurers are blinded by their own greed, just like fish drawn to the bait on a hook.
"Valak’s current predicament is hardly an emergency. It’s merely a temporary imbalance caused by the recent growth of the regional adventurer factions. As long as he kills another batch of Advanced Adventurers to weaken the local adventurer factions, things will return to the normal state of livestock farming and fishing.
"You might think Valak is overwhelmed, but in reality, he could command the Earth-Devouring Demon Insects to destroy the foundation of the entire Insect Path at any moment, burying all the adventurers in the Underground City alive.
"It’s just that doing so would destroy two-thirds of the Underground City’s architecture and Spiritual Ecosystem. He can’t bear to part with the magnificent buildings and prosperous ecosystem he spent years painstakingly constructing, and he also worries that after such self-mutilation, neighboring Demon Race Monarchs would take advantage of his weakness to invade. Therefore, he’d rather engage in a tug-of-war stalemate with the adventurers."
The Underground City seemed to hold immense significance for the Demon Race. Samael pondered this; it was equivalent to an exceptionally efficient and powerful method of survival.
Not only could the Demon Race use the Spiritual Ecosystem of the Underground City to enhance their own talents and abilities, strengthen their power, and develop their factions, but they could also lure adventurers from surrounding areas and continuously gain relatively stable returns from the corpses of deceased adventurers.
The Demon Crows had already flown away. Talia gazed at the giant tree draped in hanging corpses before them.
"There should still be some usable things on these corpses..." She turned her head to look Samael up and down, then suddenly reached out, grabbed the ankle of a corpse, and yanked it down from the tree.
The half-dried, rotting corpse hit the ground. A loose joint snapped, leaving Talia holding only half of a severed calf.
"W-w-what is this for? Are we stealing offerings and looting bodies?" Samael instinctively felt a bit uncomfortable, but thinking back to the impulsive things he had done just to get a beautiful set of equipment in Dark Souls in his past life, he felt that stealing a bandit’s offering to loot a corpse wasn’t completely out of the question.
Thinking of this, Samael looked at the tree full of corpses and couldn’t help rubbing his hands together. "Alright, then—are we going to loot the entire tree? Like... like what an old farmer in an autumn orchard does to his bountiful fruit trees?"
"No! Of course not. This corpse tree is used by the Adventurer’s Alliance to warn the Desert Bandits. We can’t destroy it entirely, or it will attract too much attention." Talia tossed aside the severed leg in her hand. "But if one or two corpses fall, it could just be that the Demon Crows bit through the hemp ropes. Perhaps the Demon Crows thought there was something shiny on the corpses, or they wanted to lower the bodies to eat at their leisure, so they snapped the ropes and took the items. That’s perfectly normal. They won’t pay it any mind."
She tore a worn grey cloak from the corpse.
"The cloak of a wilderness Exile offers no defensive value; it can only block the wind and sand. But it’s perfect for you. It can cover the gaps in the armor on your back and prevent others from seeing what’s inside your armor." Talia draped the grey cloak over Samael, carefully adjusting his collar clasps and the cloak’s hood for him.
"After all, you don’t need any more armor. Nether Copper itself boasts incredibly high strength. It’s just that Nether Copper Equipment emits a faint undead aura. Prolonged contact causes joint numbness, rigor mortis, and a bone-piercing chill akin to the brink of death. If a living person uses this equipment, it will severely hinder their combat movements and physical condition.
"The Nether Copper aura affects both enemies and the wielder equally. Furthermore, the ancient magic used to forge Ghost Knights was lost during the Age of Gods. Therefore, even if the Demon Race unearths Nether Copper Equipment from ruins during their underground excavations, they won’t use it. At most, they’ll toss it to the already sluggish Skeleton Warriors. Although Nether Copper is extremely rare and humans basically can’t recognize it, we should still conceal it, just in case." Talia pulled the hood over Samael’s helmet as she explained.
She bent down to strip the Lightweight Leather Armor from the corpse and stuffed it into the joint gaps of Samael’s armor, filling the empty voids.
"This should be about right..." She took a few steps back, assessing him.
Samael now looked exactly like a Desperate Knight. He wore ancient copper armor and an Exile’s grey cloak, with the gaps in his joints completely filled by old leather armor.
"We can add a little more." Samael bent down, tore some fabric from the corpse, and tightly wrapped the cloth strips around his Hand Armor and the junctions between the leather armor and the Nether Copper to secure and conceal them further.
"I need a slight disguise too..." Talia tugged at her own red cape, tearing its already worn edges until they were thoroughly tattered. She then grabbed two handfuls of dust from the ground and smeared them haphazardly over her armor until she, too, looked like nothing more than a Wandering Knight in Black Armor.
"If the old me knew that the current me would do this kind of thing, she’d definitely go crazy." She let out a muffled laugh from beneath her Demon Horn Helmet. "I used to hate armor altogether. I thought it was ugly and unsightly. If only I could change back into a long dress in the future..." She caught herself and stopped talking.
"They’re all beautiful," Samael said.
"Hmm?" Talia looked up.
"The armor is very beautiful too," Samael said sincerely. "I play Dark Souls, so I’m an armor fanatic... The armor for this slender figure is simply gorgeous. The curve of the armor plates around the waist is both badass and beautiful, just like the armor of the Dancer of the Cold Valley... so sexy..."
Talia fell silent for a moment.
"Oh, oh, I’m sorry, My Lord! Honto ni sumimasen!" Samael snapped back to his senses, giving a rigid, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree deep bow.
"Alright, alright... let’s go." Her face flushed red beneath the helmet. She felt a bit flustered, her heart racing slightly.
Halfway down the path, she suddenly snapped back to reality and paused.
"Wait a minute, you only like the armor?" She turned her head.
"Yeah." The Nether Copper Armor before her nodded.
"Then what about the person inside the armor?" Talia asked.
"As long as the armor looks good, it’s fine. I’m an armor fanatic," the Nether Copper Armor replied. "Why do you look so disappointed... My Lord! Foster Father, walk a little slower! Wait for me!"
He gripped the brim of his grey hood with one hand to keep it from falling off and jogged after her with a CLANG CLANG sound. As he ran, the Netherworld Copper Knight Longsword at his waist rhythmically banged against his backside, sounding like a joyful war drum.