Chapter 142 Protection Money
Boom! Boom! Several demons climbed up along the building. These demons were not light in size and weight. As soon as they jumped onto the building, the ground shook.
In the air, a few winged demons were circling the building and staring at Roy with malicious intentions.
A demon with a big mouth and sharp teeth crawled toward Roy on all four limbs. His mouth was dripping with saliva, and the saliva fell onto the ground and instantly corroded the ground until smoke rose.
When he arrived not far from Roy, he stopped and roared unclearly, “Despicable… thief! Those, souls, mine! You, can’t snatch!”
The other demons behind him did not say anything but faintly surrounded Roy.
Demons viewed the End War as a carnival. The massive number of souls in the city made them ecstatic, but not every demon could immediately devour souls right after killing enemies because of the interference of angels. There would always be delays because of various reasons. Roy used the Soul Attracting Flag to collect these souls that the demons had yet to take away, so the demons naturally viewed him with hostility, feeling that Roy had snatched their stuff.
In the distance, some angels saw the gathering of demons on the top of the building, but they wisely chose to observe. Compared with the angels, the chance of demons infighting was naturally higher. But facing the rebuke of these demons, Roy suddenly spread his demon wings. Under the infusion of magic power, the demon runes on his wings lit up, and the Halo of Fear spread, covering the entire top of the building!
Frostmourne stabbed into the ground, and formidable frost power blossomed, causing the surrounding temperature to plummet by tens of degrees. Roy raised his head and bared his fangs at the demons. “If I want to snatch, I’ll snatch! What about it? Did you come up to court death and deliver your souls to me?!”
On this battlefield, low-rank demons had no status at all. Even if the souls they hunted were snatched away, they did not have the courage to say anything. High-rank demons generally acted as commanders and dealt with high-level angels, and it was unlikely that Roy would snatch their souls. Thus, these demons who came to cause trouble were all middle-rank demons.
Therefore, once Roy released his power, these demons immediately felt threatened. Putting aside Roy’s Halo of Fear, the suppression that belonged to high-rank demons coming from Roy became clearer and clearer. When these demons felt the suppression from Roy, they could not help but take a few steps back.
They realized that they had encountered a tough opponent. This guy who had snatched their souls turned out to be a demon in the midst of promoting!
It could be said that Roy was only a step away from becoming a high-rank demon. After he compressed the last wisp of magic power in his demon heart, he would become a full-fledged high-rank demon, but these middle-rank demons who came to find trouble with him had yet to even reach the threshold for promoting!
Abyss demons were a race that advocated power, and the strict hierarchy system had been buried in their bloodlines for millions of years. So when Roy released his power, the demons at the outermost edge stepped back and turned to flee. The winged demons circling in the sky also quietly flew away. Only a few top-middle-rank demons, including the demon salivating with acid, hesitated.
They were unwilling to let Roy snatch a large number of souls. In their opinion, although Roy was not someone to be messed with, he had yet to promote and was still a middle-rank demon. Perhaps if they worked together, they could win.
At the same time, these demons had a strong sense of envy toward Roy. They were very clear that once they became high-rank demons, their status would change. Many demons dreamed of this promotion, but they could not do it yet, so it would be a lie to say that they were not envious when they discovered Roy’s situation.
Roy could roughly guess what these demons were thinking from their distorted expressions and eyes, but he did not care what they were thinking. He had already given them the opportunity. If they did not want to leave, then they could stay here for him to harvest!
He stretched out his left hand and suddenly raised it, and formidable magic power erupted from beneath the salivating demon’s feet. A sharp black ice pillar soared into the sky in less than half a second, piercing through the stomach of the salivating demon. This black ice pillar was tens of meters tall, and it hung the demon in midair in an instant!
The other demons quickly moved away when Roy’s magic power erupted. But unexpectedly Roy waved his hand, and several ice spears materialized in the air. They flew toward these demons to block their escape route.
Roar!!! Realizing the danger, these demons all roared and used their magic power to fight back.
One of the demons opened his mouth and spat out a shock wave formed by the power of darkness while two other demons ignited with blazing flames and waved their hands to fire fireballs.
Unfortunately, their magic could not stop or cancel out Roy’s ice spears at all. Roy’s black ice spears broke through their magic and pierced into their bodies!
Although he was still a middle-rank demon, Roy’s magic was now completely different from the past. The compressed magic power brought about a qualitative change in magic! It could be said that the magic he cast with the same amount of magic power was now at least twice as powerful as before!
This was the most essential difference between high-rank demons and middle-rank demons…
Roy’s ice spears pierced through the three demons at the same time, but they did not pierce their hearts. Even so, the three demons screamed loudly. But before their voices died down, Roy flashed behind them and waved Frostmourne, instantly cutting the waists of the three demons with a powerful force!
Purple blood splattered. These demons had paid the price for their hesitation just now.
After taking the souls of the three demons, Roy looked up at the demon pierced by the ice pillar. Although the ice pillar had pierced a big hole in his abdomen, he was still alive. The demon’s vitality was very strong, but the Magic Power Virus contained in the black ice pillar was rapidly devouring his magic power, leaving him unable to fight back.
“Don’t… kill me!” the demon said weakly to Roy. “You, powerful… I, willing, submit!”
This was a choice that many demons usually made when facing stronger demons. However, this situation rarely occurred among demons of the same rank. Such words showed that this demon, like Araniya before, was really afraid of Roy.
Roy thought about it and then pointed his claw at this demon from afar. He used Psychokinesis to break the ice pillar at the top and let this demon down.
The situation here was slightly different from in the Abyss. Back in the Abyss, Roy had no place to use Araniya. Moreover, he could not trust Araniya’s loyalty, so he directly killed Araniya and took her inherited memories.
However, this demon did not seem to have any inherited memories worthy of Roy’s attention, so it was better to treat him as an accomplice that helped him collect souls!
If I had known earlier, I wouldn’t have killed the other three demons so quickly… There were too many souls here, and Roy alone had limited efficiency.
“I can let you go and let your pathetic soul continue to stay in your ugly body!” Roy said to the demon attempting to pull out the remaining ice pillar from his body. “But you need to sign a demon contract with me!”
“Yes, Your Excellency!” the demon replied with a grimace. He was in pain…
Roy waved his hand, and a demon contract appeared in front of them. The content of the demon contract was very simple. Roy would let this demon go and not kill him, but as the price, twenty percent of the souls this demon obtained in this world would automatically pass through the power of the demon contract and be handed over to Roy!
To put it bluntly, Roy was collecting protection money! As long as this demon was not killed by angels or other enemies in the future, he would have to hand over twenty percent of the souls he obtained to Roy.
After seeing the content of the contract, the demon signed his demon name on it without another word.
And so, the contract was established.
“I, leave now, Your Excellency?” the demon asked carefully.
Roy nodded. Feeling relieved, the demon quickly covered his wound and jumped down from the top of the building.
Roy was not surprised that this demon had signed a contract so readily. Roy’s method of collecting protection money was not actually uncommon among demons. Many high-rank demons did this, and they were even more exploitative.
Back in the Heroes of Might and Magic world, Xeron had done this. Moreover, he was more extreme. All the spoils of war belonged to him, and he had only distributed a small portion to the demons below. Even after signing a contract with some high-level demons, Xeron actually obtained about fifty to sixty percent of the spoils.
Compared to that, Roy’s protection money was only twenty percent, which was already quite generous.
Roy was not a true high-rank demon yet, so he could not command these demons to fight and harvest the spoils of war for him. But he could use this method to find more demons to sign demon contracts. It could be regarded as a disguised form of reaching the same purpose as that of high-rank demons.
At that time, not only would he use the Soul Attracting Flag to collect souls, but he would also have a large group of contract workers under him. The speed and efficiency of earning souls would definitely increase a lot…