Ragnar Vhagar, Demon King of Aethelburg Sector 7, stared at the glowing screen of his phone.
He now had a grand total of 30 BP. In the desolate, terrifying new world he found himself in, these points felt like the only currency that mattered. They were his seed money, his startup capital for the grand enterprise of not dying horribly.
"Thirty points," he murmured, a grim smile playing on his lips. "Enough to buy a whole lot of nothing, probably."
His minions, the dozen goblins and ten kobolds, were still acting like a pack of feral children who'd just discovered sugar. The goblins had successfully claimed the potato chip bag and were now licking the salty dust from the inside with a disturbing level of focus. Gary the kobold, having recovered from his earlier puddle-related incident, was now attempting to teach another kobold how to chase its own tail. It was not going well.
"Right. Focus," Ragnar told himself, shaking his head to clear the image of spinning, failing kobolds from his mind. He tapped on the Demon King System app and navigated to the status page.
[Ragnar Vhagar]
Stats:
Body: E
Mana: E
Alchemy: E
Creation: E
Knowledge: E
All E-ranks. The stat line of a champion couch potato.
But below them was a button that pulsed with a faint, inviting light: [Allocate BP]. He pressed it.
A new screen appeared, looking like a skill tree from a cheap mobile game. Each stat was listed with a small '+' button next to it. A tooltip popped up.
[Ranking up a stat from E -> D costs 2 BP.]
[Ranking up a stat from D -> C costs 5 BP.]
[Ranking up a stat from C -> B costs 10 BP.]
The cost jumped up fast. An exponential curve designed to make you agonize over every single point.
Ragnar's mind, which was used to calculating the optimal build for video game characters, went into overdrive.
"Okay, let's break this down," he said, pacing back and forth in front of his peeling gaming chair throne. "I can't leave. The heroes are coming to me. My personal combat ability is a joke, even if an E-rank punch can demolish a wall. I can't be everywhere at once. So, boosting my own Body or Mana right now is a waste."
He needed leverage. He needed force multipliers.
"The best way to kill heroes is to have my minions do it for me. That means I need more, and better, minions. That's the Creation stat."
He nodded to himself. Solid logic.
"But," he continued, a sly look in his eye, "how do I make sure the heroes come here in the first place?
And how do I level up fast before they get too strong? I need to bait them. I need to make them want to come to my dungeon."
His eyes fell on the Alchemy stat. The ability to create items. He imagined it: a weak-looking hero party stumbles into his dungeon, gets beaten up a little, but finds a treasure chest.
Inside is a sword that glows, a helmet that shines—powerful gear that they can't get anywhere else. They'd run back to their friends, to their online forums, and brag. His dungeon would become famous, a "high-reward farm." A steady stream of walking, talking experience points would deliver themselves right to his door.
"It's brilliant," he whispered. "I'll lure them in with shiny trinkets, then smash them with my army of morons. Step one: Alchemy."
He went back to the app, his mind made up. He'd put just enough points into Alchemy to get it to D-rank. That would be 2 BP. He'd put the rest into Creation.
He tapped the '+' next to Alchemy. A slider bar appeared, ranging from E to SSS.
It was surprisingly sensitive. He tried to carefully drag it just a little bit, to the 'D' rank marker. But his thumb, slick with the nervous sweat of a new Demon King making his first major decision, slipped. The slider shot across the screen, landing squarely on 'B'.
A confirmation box popped up. [Allocate 17 BP to raise Alchemy to B-Rank? Y/N]
Ragnar, in his haste and excitement, didn't read the number. He just saw the confirmation and triumphantly slammed his thumb on the 'Y'.
BOOM!
A wave of invisible energy, a sonic boom of pure information, erupted from the phone. It didn't shake the room, but it shook him.
A torrent of knowledge flooded his brain.He stumbled back, clutching his head, his vision swimming with glowing runes and complex diagrams.
When his senses returned, he looked at his phone.
[Alchemy has been raised to B-Rank!]
[Remaining BP: 13]
He stared. And stared.
"Sev... seventeen?" he squeaked, his voice cracking. He did the math in his head.
E to D was 2.
D to C was 5.
C to B was 10.
Two plus five plus ten. Seventeen. He had accidentally spent over half his starting capital on making magical jewelry.
"No, no, no, no!" he yelled, grabbing his hair. "I'm a master craftsman with no materials, no workshop, and an army of two dozen idiots who think sniffing each other is a battle strategy! I've become the world's most powerful fantasy Etsy seller!"
His goblins and kobolds stopped their nonsense and stared at him, their beady eyes wide with confusion at their master's sudden breakdown.
After a few minutes of frantic, panicked pacing, Ragnar forced himself to calm down. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay. Okay. It's not ideal. But maybe... maybe it's not a total disaster."
A B-rank was powerful. The bait he could create would be irresistible. He just needed something to defend it with.
He looked at his remaining 13 BP. Creation was now more critical than ever. He went back to the app, his movements now slow and deliberate, as if handling a live bomb. He tapped the '+' next to Creation. He painstakingly used 3 BP to raise it from E to D.
[Creation has been raised to D-Rank!]
[Remaining BP: 10]
He exhaled, relieved that he hadn't accidentally spent the rest on becoming a master chef or something. He decided to save the last 10 BP. They were his emergency fund.
Feeling mentally exhausted from the rollercoaster of the last ten minutes, he walked through the giant hole in his living room wall into the kitchen. His demonic power source, the True Core, was supposed to be in the coldest part of his domain. He still hadn't dealt with that.
He pulled open the freezer door. A cloud of icy mist billowed out. And there it was. Sitting between a bag of freezer-burned peas and a suspiciously brown block of what might have once been ground beef, was the glowing black crystal.
It was the size of a human heart, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat that he could feel in his own chest. It was a nexus of pure, unadulterated Chaos.
[True Core (Rank F)]
[The heart of your Domain. If this is destroyed, you will perish. Protect it at all costs!!.]
Ragnar stared at the profound, terrifying object that was literally his soul. Then he looked at its neighbor. A single, sad Hot Pocket, its cardboard sleeve wrinkled and frostbitten.
"So, my demonic soul, the very essence of my being as a Lord of Chaos," he said to the empty kitchen, "is currently being protected by a layer of frost and the vague threat of salmonella from this ancient piece of meat."
A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. It was absurd. It was pathetic. It was… perfect. This whole situation was a cosmic joke, and he was starting to get the punchline.
He had a B-rank in Alchemy, a D-rank in Creation, 10 points in the bank, and an army of sniffing, chip-licking morons. The heroes were coming. The world was a battlefield.
"Alright, you useless bags of fur and slime!" his voice boomed, no longer panicked, but filled with a new, wild energy.
"New plan! We're not just building a fortress.
We're opening for business! The grand opening of Ragnar's Emporium of High-Tier Loot and Certain Death! First, we secure Aethelburg Sector 7. Then, the world!"
Gary the kobold barked excitedly, did a celebratory spin, and promptly crashed headfirst into the refrigerator.
Ragnar sighed. World domination was going to be a long, long, and very stupid process