Part 10 (Unedited) – [Demon Lord’s Castle]
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Stepping through the spirit gate felt almost like jumping into a pool. For the moment I felt submerged, until I instinctively kicked my way back to the ‘surface’. 

Suddenly, I was standing on a rough black surface the size of a living room, surrounded by a fog so dense it might as well have been a physical wall. In fact, the fog was a wall of sorts. Walking into it would be similar to walking through a spirit gate only, unlike the large spirit gate at the Grand Demon Lord’s castle, it was a lot less precise. Thankfully, anyone with the Grand Demon Lord’s blessing could easily get back to his spirit gates, meaning all the newborn demon lords could rest easy knowing they wouldn’t be stuck here. 

For reference, non newborn demon lords would simply end up in the spirit world’s wilderness if they walked into the fog. They would always end up in around the same area, as domains did were a part of the spirit world after all and had their own locations. Space was a rather loose thing in the spirit world, as it didn’t obey the normal laws of geography.

All that said, I didn’t come here to ponder the secrets of the spirit world. Feeling my spirit power inside me, I activated the last of the four main demon lord skills.

 

[Demon Lord’s Castle]

At the cost of spirit power, rooms may be created, destroyed, modified, or moved. The effects of some rooms may change depending on the power of the demon lord.

 

When Ivercel had mentioned that we would be building our castles, he hadn’t literally meant castles. Castle was simply the blanket name given to what a demon lord created in their domain. It could be anything from a massive ant hive to a city made of bones. Lots of demon lords also just created classic castles too.

As for what I wanted… I didn’t actually know. The form the castle took didn’t matter as much while demon lords were still young, as practicality mattered a lot more while we were still so weak. Not to mention everything could be changed later.

My choices were limited as I didn’t have much spirit power to play with. Spirit power was a precious commodity for all creatures that could use magic, but it was especially valuable for demon lords. 

Demon lords naturally had extremely high amounts of spirit power compared to other creatures. This meant that even the simplest spells could be overcharged and made far stronger in their hands. It was also how they could afford to use magic capable of creating monsters and structures purely from spirit power. 

However, demon lords recharged spirit power incredibly slowly compared to most other creatures, and skills or potions designed to help recharge it had massively dampened effects on demon lords, if they had any effect at all.

This meant demon lords had to carefully consider every usage of spirit power, but if they were careful and kept some in reserve, they could be terrifying foes with overwhelming magical abilities. Oh and my use of [Healing Hands] didn’t actually diminish my spirit power because whatever kept you from truly dying in mock battles also gave you back all the spirit power you had used during the battle.

Honestly whatever magic allowed the mock battles to function must have been crazy, since none of what was done should be possible for demon lords, but I guess the Grand Demon Lord just existed on a completely different level. It was a shame that while you could certainly learn a bunch from the mock battles, you couldn’t gain spirit power like you normally would when defeating a monster.

Demon lords, monsters, and even humans all could become stronger by killing other beings that had spirit power. It was a bit different for each, and I didn’t actually know much about how it worked for humans. 

For monsters it was pretty simple, whenever they killed a creature with spirit power, they are able to devour some of that energy thus becoming stronger. It was a slow process, but with time even one star creatures could become powerhouses. This also meant that it was dangerous to rely purely on the number of stars a creature had to determine how strong it was.

For demon lords it was somewhat similar. Whenever they killed a creature with spirit power, they would gain a bit of spirit power. Unlike monsters, there was no increase in strength. That is unless the creature was killed inside of the demon lords domain. Whenever a creature dies inside the demon lords domain, whether or not it was killed by the demon lord, the demon lord would become stronger. This would result in not only an increase in strength, but also an increase in spirit power regeneration. Sadly, this wouldn’t happen if it was your own monsters that were killed. It was also important to note that while monsters and humans had a maximum amount of spirit power they could store inside themselves at once, with this maximum increasing as they grew stronger, demon lords had no maximum, with their slow regeneration being the main thing that held them back.

Something about the odd way humans used spirit power meant that just having humans inside your domain would also strengthen the demon lord. It was a common strategy to find ways to tempt humans into your domain and let them battle your monsters so that you can get the spirit power they naturally give off. The boost humans gave was worth more than the cost of creating monsters, so in a way it became a symbiotic relationship where hunting monsters allowed the humans to become stronger, while strong humans just existing inside a dungeon made the demon lords stronger.

Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I focused back on what I was doing. I really needed to stop mentally recapping past lessons... 

Demon lords, just like all creatures, had basic needs like sleeping and eating. Apparently food would be provided by the Grand Demon Lord, but we were on our own when it came to sleeping arrangements. That meant I would at the very least need a bedroom. 

Lets see, the simple stone room was the cheapest but I had a feeling a stone room would be rather cold. Saving up is important but there was no way I could be such a miser when it came to where I would sleep. Oh, a wooden room! I gave it a nice big bed, a cozy fireplace, and a simple table with two chairs. Some might say this was unnecessary, but they unfortunately can’t grasp the greater picture. 

By the way, none of these structures and objects came with numerical costs. Instead, thinking about what you would want to buy would make you feel a sort of drag on your spirit power, which let you estimate how much it would cost. For instance, I had just spent half my total spirit power on this room which now replaced the cold rocky area that my domain had defaulted as. It would take me about half a week to replenish naturally.

I couldn’t just make a bedroom though, as the main purpose for a domain was to hold a demon lord’s monsters. I could store one monster free of charge with my [Store Monster] skill, but any more than that and it would start costing spirit power, and what kind of demon lord wasted spirit power on frivolous things like that?

Seeing as my creatures were just glorified horses, I decided a grassy plain would be perfect. Actually it was more than perfect because it was extremely cheap! Suddenly, a field surrounded my house. My domain was now the size of a small park, and I still had over a fourth of my magic energy left.

There were a few things I wanted. Fields for growing food, mines for getting minerals, and forests for getting lumber, but of course without any humanoid monsters those were all useless at the moment. Thankfully there was one thing I wanted to try buying…

A brand new unicorn now stood before me. It had cost most of my remaining spirit power but increasing my troops was never a bad idea. From my estimates, it would take a little less than two days to generate enough spirit power to create a new one.

There was no need to bring Avalon out as I planned on keeping him in storage at all times, but I wanted to at least give him a chance to see our new home. As he came out of storage, a glaive clattered to the ground. Not just a glaive, but the same glaive I had used in the battle with Viper.

Items could not be stored with [Store Monster] unless they were equipped by the monsters, and I had doubts that a hooved animal could hold a glaive. I double checked by trying to put Avalon in storage with the glaive again but just as I suspected it did not work. Whatever weird magic allowed the mock battles to reverse death and spirit energy usage also must have been able to forcefully put an item in my storage. If I had known my glaive was in there, I wouldn’t have brought Avalon out, as leaving the glaive in there until my next battle could have been useful.

I brought my weapon into my bedroom, which from the outside looked like a random wooden box. When I had more spirit energy, perhaps I could add a roof, windows, and a proper door as there currently was just an empty door frame.

There wasn’t much left to do in my domain now so after letting Avalon run around for a few moments and introduce himself to our new unicorn, I brought him into storage. With that done, I walked into the fog surrounding my domain and travelled back to the Grand Demon Lord’s castle.


Thank you for reading this far into my story! I began writing it in a google doc about 4 days ago after binge reading a bunch of 'Demon Lord' type webnovels. I love the concept of them but I always hated the execution, as the main characters always were extremely overpowered and I've never been a fan of harems in stories, so you can think of Demon Days as my own take on the demon lord trope.

Currently, I don't have a job which is how I was able to write 11k words in four days, but in a few days I will be starting a new job at best buy (yay!) and likely won't have as much energy to spare on writing. That being said, if you want to get lots of chapters please write me encouraging comments as that will give me lots more energy to write!

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