Chapter 3: Darkness Valley
Up on the altar, the dragon started shrinking until it turned into a three meters tall, half man, half dragon being. This is the second form of the Abyssal Dragon.
Zhang Nu had discovered that after his transformation, his stats also changed quite a bit.
In his dragon form, his base stats are: 400 HP, 200 MP, 40 Strength, 20 Agility, 40 Constitution, 20 Will.
In his draconian form, his base stats are: 200 HP, 400 MP, 20 Strength, 40 Agility, 20 Constitution, 40 Will.
In the dragon form, HP, strength, and constitution are higher.
In the draconian form, MP, agility, and will are higher.
Simply put, one is more specialized towards melee combat, while the other is more agile and more suited for using skills. For Zhang Nu specifically though, he'd obviously be more used to the humanoid form.
Of course, humanoid doesn't actually mean human.
Zhang Nu is three meters tall, bearing an enormous pair of wings. Of course, he also doesn't lack sharp teeth and claws, sturdy scales, horns on his head and an oppressive presence either.
Dragon form will grow bigger and bigger as he grows in power.
Zhang Nu felt that too large a form will be inconvenient, so baring cases where he's facing special battles, he'll otherwise be using this current form as his main one.
Then, he glanced at the altar beneath him.
[Demon King Altar]. Special building. A construct required for Demon King players to level up and develop their territory. Please protect it at all costs.
The Demon King Altar is extremely important.
Its main function is to summon subordinates.
The subordinates that a Demon King can summon depends on their own race and level.
Take a Slime Demon King for example. The subordinates they can summon are mostly various kinds of slimes. It's just that their type, level, and abilities differ.
Gold is required to summon subordinates.
Leveling up requires talent points.
As for how to gain talent points? Currently, the only way is to kill Heroes and consume their Hero souls.
It's for that reason that Heroes and Demon Kings are natural foes.
A Hero can gain great wealth and power by defeating Demon Kings.
Demon Kings similarly need to think of ways to lure in Heroes and, by stepping over their corpses, finally become a terrible existence capable of ruling the world!
"I have neither Hero Souls nor game gold though!"
"Everything starts out difficult. All I can do is take it one step at a time."
"Let's first explore the surrounding area then."
He took to the air with a flap of his wings.
The feeling of taking to the skys can only be described with a single word: Awesome!
Zhang Nu's vision is far stronger than that of humans, so he could easily distinguish the surrounding geography. At that moment, messages started automatically popping up one after another.
[Normal cave]. Low exploration value. Resources: Stone.
[Normal forest]. Low exploration value. Resources: Wood.
[Normal swamp]. Level 1 normal area. There are high numbers of poisonous lizards and snakes. Average exploration value. Resources: Poisonous lizard materials, poisonous snake materials, small amounts of herbs, small amounts of drinking water.
With this power of his, it greatly reduced the amount of waste time spent on exploration, as well as greatly increased the efficiency and lowered the dangers.
Zhang Nu immediately locked onto a certain area.
[Darkness Woods]. Level 1 normal area. The biggest forest within the Darkness Valley. Within it are high quantities of high quality wood, wild fruits, herbs, bigfoot birds, unicorn deers, forest wolves, and other animals. Relatively high exploration value. Resources: Wood, wild fruits, herbs, meat, etc.
In the nearby areas, the Darkness Woods have the highest exploration value.
Zhang Nu immediately entered the woods and various new messages started popping up.
[Tricolored fruit]. Gray quality. Can recover 3 MP.
[Bluemoon grass]. White quality. Can recover 10 HP.
It's indeed rich in resources!
Zhang Nu picked a tricolored fruit. It's about the size of a human fist, although for the current him, it's like a cherry.
He tossed it in his mouth and chewed. It's juicy, sweet, and delicious.
Zhang Nu was quite shocked by the taste of the fruit. It's far better than the fruits back in the real world. Fortunately, draconians are omnivores and their general tastes are fairly similar to that of humans as well.
Thus, he could have quite a treat for himself!
Zhang Nu picked a few sprigs of herbs along with a bunch of wild fruit and tossed them all into the player's inventory before getting ready to explore some more.
Gugugugu!
A strange large bird poked out from the berry bush before him.
This strange bird is somewhat similar to an ostrich. Its most noticeable feature is its huge feet. It has a certain amount of flight ability, but it depends more on its two legs to run. Within the narrow woods, its speed won't lose to a human short dash champion.
[Bigfoot bird]. Level 1 normal creature. A bird who lives in thick woods that specializes in running and mainly eats berries. Its main weapon is its sharp beak. No special skills. No threat to the host.
A wild monster!
Zhang Nu's figure flashed forward.
He was way too fast.
The bigfoot bird had its neck broken on the spot.
[Game message: You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +1!]
Zhang Nu's eyes gleamed. So it's possible to get gold just from killing monsters!
[You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +1!]
[You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +1!]
[You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +1!]
[You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +2!]
[You've slain a bigfoot bird. Gold +4!]
[...]
Bigfood birds are everywhere in these woods and he also encountered two unicorn deers. Those weak herbivores had basically no real combat ability.
Forest wolves do have a certain amount of attack power.
These wolves are a good size larger than even the biggest wolves back in reality. Their sharp teeth could shatter boulders. However, they still can't do any damage to Zhang Nu.
This is only natural.
He's a Demon King after all.
Even if he only just descended and has not unlocked his Talents yet.
With his powerful bloodline and stats, Zhang Nu's actual combat power can already basically rival that of Lord class or above monsters of the same level.
How could normal monsters like forest wolves be of any threat?
After two hours, even discounting the collected food and materials, Zhang Nu had earned 42 gold. His gains were quite considerable.
Gold doesn't seem hard to earn.
Not bad, not bad at all. He headed back to the altar in preparation to summon some subordinates.
Zhang Nu checked it over. Currently, there are two possible units that are unlocked and available to be summoned.
[Draconian laborer]. Level 1, normal. Summoning costs 5 gold. Summary: Low class draconian with extremely weak bloodline purity. They are the lowest of the draconians. Although they're not very strong in combat, they do have production and construction capabilities.
[Draconian soldier]. Level 1, elite. Summoning costs 100 gold. Summary: Basic soldiers among draconians. They are vicious and powerful in combat.
T/N: And so we see more uses for the MC's cheat. I kind of like it actually. It's a bit understated so it doesn't feel like it overshadows everything, but it's also always consistently useful so it never feels like it fades out of the story as a whole. Spoilers by the way: More uses for it will come over time. See if you can guess some.