Lilith sat on the violet step of the altar, a cascade of system notifications blurring before her eyes. The sound of virtual coins clinking into her pouch was the most beautiful music she had heard in three days.
[TRADE SUCCESSFUL! YOU HAVE GAINED 3 GOLD!]
[TRADE SUCCESSFUL! YOU HAVE GAINED 3 GOLD!]
[...]
[ALL YOUR ITEMS HAVE BEEN SOLD!]
She smiled broadly, squaring her shoulders. Her plan with the warehouse and the food stockpiling had paid off perfectly.
"Day five and six..." she muttered to herself. "The price of meat and fruit has spiked again. Now they're going for three gold per portion. I was right: the closer we get to the end of the protection period, the more people panic and need supplies. Demand has crushed supply once more."
She looked up, her gaze sweeping proudly over her territory. Around the central plaza, a solid, austere Stone Wall was already rising. Though unadorned, it radiated raw power. Her skeletons and succubi had worked flawlessly - nearly the entire core territory was now enclosed by a barrier designed to stop any uninvited guest.
Her eyes wandered further, toward the dark wall of trees. DARKNESS WOODS - terrain that until recently had been "wild" - now pulsed in her interface with the same violet glow as the altar. She could now place buildings there, meaning it was officially part of her kingdom.
"It looks like I can expand my territory..." She lightly stroked her chin with a talon, her eyes narrowing in thought. "I wonder what conditions I have to meet to conquer more land in the Valley of Chaos? Is it enough to just wipe out everything that lives there?"
She furrowed her brow as a shadow of her old human morality flickered through her mind. That's a bit fucked up... Killing absolutely everything just to move a line on a map?
She fell silent for a moment, looking at her talons and her natural armor shimmering in the gloom. She sighed heavily, and her expression hardened. "But then again... I am a Demon King. Isn't that our role? To kill, to sow havoc, and to take what we want?"
She pushed these philosophical dilemmas aside as a counter at the top of the screen caught her attention.
[ CURRENT NUMBER OF DEMON KINGS: 13,929,501 / 14,000,000 ]
"Dammit..." she whispered, her heart stopping for a beat. "Over seventy thousand of us are already dead. And the safety period hasn't even ended yet. What happened to them? Did they fall victim to their own units? Did they starve? Or did they just overestimate their strength against wild beasts?"
Intrigued and slightly terrified, she opened the public chat to see how the rest of the "unfortunates" trapped in this world were faring.
"Hey, do your goblins look at you like they want to eat you? Because mine were sharpening their knives this morning while staring me right in the eye..."
"Man, same here. I had to lop one's head off just to get the rest to start cleaning the shit out of the pens. Authority is built with blood, not requests!"
"Does anyone know where to get cloth for clothes?! I've been running around naked for three days and got the [Frost-Resistant Narcissist] talent. I'm not complaining about the stats, but my units have started ignoring me..."
"Buying [Well] blueprint. Paying 500 gold. My skeletons don't drink, but I'm about to die of thirst. This forest is as dry as the host's jokes."
"People, stop complaining about hunger. Yesterday I found a nest of giant spiders. The meat tastes like chicken, just burns the throat a bit. Highly recommended!"
"The safety period is ending soon... doesn't that mean the Heroes will start hunting us?! Hell, I have trouble killing the damn giant wolves that haunt me, let alone Heroes..."
"Whatever, just scaring the suckers. I have an army of 50 orcs. Just let some 'Hero' try to approach my wall, and I'll turn his skull into a beer mug."
Lilith slid her talon across the swirling stream of messages, the interface's glow reflecting in her violet eyes. She sighed quietly, feeling a strange pang in her chest.
"Not a single person even mentioned those who are gone..." she whispered to herself, watching the number of dead Demon Kings rise almost by the minute.
She smiled crookedly, recalling the panic of the first day. Back then, the death of the first thousand players had caused a literal earthquake in the chat. People screamed, begged for help, swore it was all some mistake. And now? After less than a week, seventy thousand deaths had become just another statistic, background noise for arguments over the price of water or bragging about new talents. The adaptation mechanism was terrifyingly fast - the Demon Kings were slowly ceasing to be humans from that other world and starting to become ruthless players in this bloody game.
Before closing the window, she habitually typed her daily mantra into the trade chat:
Buying residential building blueprint (Tavern, House, Tent - anything with a bed). Offers via PM.
She waited a few seconds, but as usual, there was no reply. With a frustrated sigh, she closed the interface, and the violet light of the windows died out, leaving her in the darkness of the Valley.
She rose from the altar and stretched deeply, feeling the amaranth plates of her armor shift across her skin with a soft metallic scrape. Over these few days, she had already grown accustomed to her new body and her wings. She looked up at the dark, starless sky, which always seemed heavier over the Ruins of Darkness than anywhere else.
"It's already the seventh day..." she muttered under her breath, feeling the cool breeze from the Darkness Woods against her face. "Almost a week. Seriously... time here flies like crazy."
Not long ago, she was worried if she'd even survive the first night, and now she was managing territory, trading with thousands of people, and planning wall expansions. Yet, deep down, she felt a rising unease.
Lilith instinctively twisted her torso, looking over her shoulder at her powerful, leathery wing. She narrowed her eyes, and her talons cautiously touched the spot where the membrane was still slightly tattered and covered in dried tissue.
"Still the same..." she sighed in frustration, her shoulders slumping. "It looks like as a succubus, I don't have much in the way of natural regeneration."
For a moment, she felt a bitter disappointment. In her visions, fed by tales of mighty demons, she had imagined that as a Demon King, she would be able to fight epic battles, emerge heavily wounded, and then return to full strength in a matter of days.
Reality, however, proved much more mundane and painful. If seven days weren't enough to naturally heal a wound that wasn't even serious, Lilith could hardly imagine how long she'd have to sit out if she lost an arm or sustained a deep chest laceration.
"Just dreams of power," she muttered. "I wonder if healing potions even exist here? Or any doctors? Though in this world, it's probably more like people with specific healing skills... They must exist. This system can't be so cruel as to condemn us to months of wound-licking after every major skirmish."
She stretched again, feeling her spine pop, and in a flare of purple light, she reverted to her human silhouette. She wanted to just sit and rest when suddenly the air before her face vibrated, and a brilliant red system message tore through the night's darkness, hitting her eyes with an ominous glare.
[Game announcement: The Demon King safe period has now ended!]
Lilith froze with her arms still raised. Her heart hammered harder against her ribs, and blood pulsed loudly in her temples. She knew this moment was coming. She had counted the days, built the walls, traded to grow in strength... but now, with those words hanging in the air, she felt a paralyzing chill.
The safety period was over. This was no longer a drill. The invisible shield that for seven days had kept the outside world and the Heroes away from her existence had just evaporated.
"Really... already?" she whispered, her eyes widening in terror.
Lilith stood motionless, staring at the fading letters of the announcement. In her mind, like fragments of an unlocked database, brutal facts about the world's mechanics began to align. She understood it with total clarity: Demon Kings and Heroes were not simply two sides of a conflict - they were opposing factions whose very existences were mutually exclusive.
Heroes possessed an unnatural, almost magnetic ability to sense the presence of Demon Kings. For the last seven days, she had been protected by an invisible barrier, a sort of "shroud" that suppressed her essence. But now... now that shroud had fallen. From this second forward, every Hero within a radius of many kilometers could feel her existence as a pulsing dot on the map of their greed. Only now, after the end of the safety period, could they officially begin to "subjugate" - or more simply: murder - those like her.
The battle between Demon Kings and Heroes had officially begun.
"Seven days..." Lilith whispered, clenching her fists so hard her nails dug into her palms. "That is definitely too short. How is anyone supposed to build an empire in a week?"
Despite the icy shiver of terror running down her spine, Lilith tried not to panic. She took a deep, slow breath, attempting to rationally assess her situation. Her territory was developing properly - she had skeletons, she had walls, and she had three unique succubi.
Furthermore, the location she had chosen - the Valley of Eternal Darkness - was an extremely fractured, wild, and lawless region. This wasn't the heart of civilization where armies of justice could form a mass crusade in a single afternoon. Here, amidst the marshes and cursed ruins, everyone looked out for their own skin. It was unlikely that a legion of knights on white horses would ride up to her gates.
For a Demon King with her potential, this place was perfect. Isolated, dark, and offering a chance for growth far from the main paths. This was her bastion.
"They won't all come at once," she muttered to herself, the light returning to her eyes. "And if they come one by one... well, my wall and my girls will be waiting for them."