ALL NOVEL Chapter 358: Issues
During the last few years, Fiery Pepper has been extremely busy, attacking human farms one after another and delivering released human captives to Human Civilization in exchange for large amounts of energy crystals.
Skyfire Demon King has grown desperate. Even though, in a fair fight, she could crush Fiery Pepper, it would still have at least a few seconds to escape. The difference in power is not so great that Skyfire could kill it in an instant.
Skyfire Demon King is one of the most powerful demon kings when it comes to firepower. She possesses a famous bloodline called Skyfire, which allows her to melt a city with a single spell. The Skyfire bloodline excels at causing devastating damage over large areas, but it's less effective against individuals, especially demons. Most demons have fire resistance, which means Skyfire Demon King is actually quite weak against demons.
Humans have been developing new elements, such as Infernal Ice, to bypass demons' fire resistance. Infernal Ice is neither truly ice nor fire; it freezes and burns like both, but in a way that overcomes fire and ice resistance.
It might seem logical to abandon traditional elements like fire and ice in favor of these newly invented ones, but there is a significant drawback: demonic bloodlines are not compatible with them. Both humans and demons ultimately draw their energy from demonic bloodlines, and mixing energy with newly invented elements can cause many conflicts that can cause serious issues, including an increased chance of spell failure.
Even high-level mages can only increase their success rate of casting high-grade spells with invented elements to about 99.9%. While this might sound good, a 1 in 1,000 chance of failure is too high to be sustainable. The backlash from a spellcasting failure of a high-grade spell can be disastrous, especially in the middle of battle. Typically, only a 99.999999% success rate is considered safe.
However, invented elements do have their uses. For example, if a formation is set up beforehand to absorb backlash, it can eliminate the downside of using invented elements. They are also useful in group fights; if one person fails, the other members can protect them. There are many situations where invented elements are a better option than traditional ones.
Fiery Pepper's bloodline is a good match against the Skyfire bloodline. While it is not one of the ancient and famous bloodlines, it is still formidable. Its bloodline spell, Burning Hot, is a focused, concentrated attack with power nearly comparable to that of a demon with 90% blood purity. The bearer of this bloodline also gains exceptionally high fire and heat resistance, an affinity for spatial spells such as teleportation, and resistance to spatial blocking spells. In many ways, Fiery Pepper is a natural-born assassin.
Skyfire Demon King has set many traps over the years, but Fiery Pepper, aided by the intelligence of the Human Civilization, has managed to avoid them all, successfully evading direct encounters with the demon king.
The demon king, in turn, has given up on trying to capture or kill Fiery Pepper and has instead focused on creating more human farms. If Fiery Pepper can destroy, Skyfire can build.
However, all the trouble with Fiery Pepper has inevitably increased operational costs. The rising prices and dwindling supplies have started to hurt Skyfire Demon King, who began to lose market share to her competitor, Demon King Moondemon.
Moondemon showed no mercy, deliberately cutting her prices to capitalize on Skyfire's troubles and gain as much market share as possible.
Before Fiery Pepper's attacks, Skyfire held about 50% of the market share, while Moondemon had around 40%. The remainder belonged to a few other distributors, most of whom were supported by Moondemon and handed a significant portion of their profits to her.
After Fiery Pepper's attacks, Skyfire lost a substantial amount of market share, dropping to around 30%, while Moondemon rose to about 50%. The rest of the market share belongs to third parties, nearly all of whom are under Moondemon's influence, as she has always been more willing to cooperate with third-party producers and distributors.
When Fiery Pepper first sought to cooperate, it made the mistake of contacting Skyfire. If it had reached out to Moondemon instead, many things might have been different. There was a strong chance that Moondemon would have agreed to the deal. At that time, Fiery Pepper had no idea which option was better and chose Skyfire simply because it liked her name more.
The past is the past. Fiery Pepper is not the type of demon to regret anything and is certainly not planning to change its behavior. However, it does learn from its mistakes. After discovering that Moondemon was more friendly toward third-party producers and distributors, Fiery Pepper contacted her and struck a deal to sell whatever flesh it looted from Skyfire's labs to Moondemon at exactly half the market price.
Originally, Fiery Pepper had trouble selling the vast quantities of flesh it had captured over the years, but after the deal with Moondemon, it sold it all in just a few months.
In total, Fiery Pepper has earned over 500 million energy crystals in the past few years. This amount is equivalent to 5% of the entire yearly budget of the Human Civilization.
It's important to note that humans are much wealthier than even the largest demonic cities when it comes to energy crystals. The Human Civilization controls countless energy mines inside the Wall and even some outside of it. A significant amount of energy crystals is required to keep the Great Wall running, and humans have even invented ways to create artificial energy crystals.
While 500 million energy crystals would account for 5% of the Human Civilization's yearly budget, it represents more than five years' worth of revenue for a big demonic city. This means that, on average, Fiery Pepper has earned more energy crystals than a big demonic city on its own. Of course, some demonic cities, such as Skyfire City, earn more than average, while others earn less.
Most demon kings don't care much about energy crystals. They don’t need energy for walls, relying instead on their strength, and don’t need to maintain many defensive formations. If they truly wanted to, demon kings could collectively earn far more than the Human Civilization, but they don't, which is why the average energy crystal income of large demonic cities is so low.
The Human Civilization, for its part, has been very satisfied with Fiery Pepper. While it is certainly reckless and occasionally kills a few innocent people who get in its way, it has saved millions of lives overall. Sure, the Human Civilization paid a hefty price; each human Fiery Pepper delivered was exchanged for 100 magic crystals, which added up over time. But again, saving millions of lives is a significant achievement.
The Human Civilization does not consider itself a country. It sees itself as the savior of the human species, a shelter for all humans, regardless of where they were born, what language they speak, or how they look. Saving humans has always been the most critical mission of the Human Civilization. While giving so many energy crystals to Fiery Pepper meant cutting corners on projects, the lives of millions of humans are far more valuable than a few million energy crystals.
The people already living in Human Civilization have mostly supported this approach; of course, there have been many different views about the topic; the addition of millions of people inevitably caused societal issues.
First of all, those rescued from human farms were all uneducated. They were born and bred to give birth to babies, who would then be used for flesh. Most of those rescued were young women, with a few men among them. After being settled in a few cities across the Human Civilization inside the Wall, they quickly became popular among young men. This caused significant problems. For example, many wives could only watch helplessly as their husbands cheated on them with newly arrived women. Young, marriage-age girls could only sigh as their potential future husbands married these new arrivals.
It wasn’t the fault of the newly arrived people. They had lived for years in terrible conditions and were suddenly released into unfamiliar cities with many men around them. Naturally, having no relatives or friends, many of these women befriended local young men in hopes of starting a new life. The lucky ones married, while the unlucky ones ended up as prostitutes.
One reason for this significant disruption was that the Human Civilization placed the newly released people in only a handful of cities rather than spreading them out equally. The government did this for several reasons. For example, spreading them across many cities would make them harder to manage. Keeping them in groups made it easier to identify them, keep track of them, distribute government aid, and set up schools to teach them how to read and speak the dominant language.
The disruption led to the emergence of several political parties advocating for better integration of the newly released people, spreading them across all cities, and implementing related policies. No political party outright advocated for expelling them or stopping the rescue efforts. Overall, the disagreements were about how to handle the situation, not about whether or not to save them.