24 Chapter 24: Progress
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Over the next 400 years, The Dragon Kingdom improved significantly.
First, many master blacksmiths finally learned how to consistently make Unique grade weapons and armor, and even Unique grade sets. One swordsmith even learned how to make a Legendary grade sword, and had the honor of making Velgin's personal katana.
The population of both cities in the Dragon Kingdom increased to a great extent. The Capital City, renamed to Central City, or the Dragon's Nest, had its population increase to 30 thousand, though all of them were one of the three dragon races, Dragonewts, Dragon Elves, and Dragon Dwarves. The Ogres moved their village to the south, and renamed their settlement to South City. It still had a small population, but Velgin named everyone there, so their strength had increased to A rank.
Lastly, the Human city, renamed to North City, was booming like always. The economy became strong enough to be independent from the rest of the country, but Emilia made sure to keep a close eye on them.
At first, the population of North City increased too quickly. When it reached a total of 3 million residents after only 20 years, they had a decently large food shortage. But then, Velgin and Rudra came up with a secret plan to help both nations.
Rudra was starting to implement his plan of waging one-sided wars to force his soilders to improve and hopefully awaken. When he learned of Velgin's troubles, he sent an offer, which was to start a small scale yearly skirmish, where both sides would send a small army of 50 thousand. This still would have been a one sided deal, but Rudra offered her all the souls from both sides, though he did limit casualties to one percent maximum.
The benefits of this took about a century to reap, but once Velgin received over 100 thousand souls, she recalled Zeldris from his mission and awakened him into a True Demon Lord.
Zeldris awakened [Martial King Ares], which basically enhanced all his hand to hand combat abilities, and nullified all mid and long range attacks. His EP Value also spiked, reaching 3 Million, well into the S rank.
Besides that, Velgin had been using a small amount of excess souls to increase her own EP Value, taking about 10 percent of the souls she gained. This strengthened her EP Value to 35 Million, but was still lower than Guy and Milim, since Guy was also taking souls, and Milim had access to an infinite number of Magicules.
In their three way race to become SSS rank, Guy somehow was in the lead, as he copied Luminous's [Lust King Asmodeus] as well as Dino's [Sloth King Belphegor]. He wasn't able to find anyone with [Envy King Leviathan], but that didn't bother him, as he believed that he could induce the weaker demon lords to awaken it.
He didn't find [Hope King Sariel] either, but he was extremely lucky, as near the beginning of the race, an awakened true Hero had challenged him, and had brought [Purity King Metatron] straight to him. All Guy needed was Envy and Hope, but Velgin knew that Guy wouldn't be able to find Hope until Granbell Rosso was born, which would take more than 500 years.
Milim was close to where Velgin was, as both of them didn't yet have a clear path. Milim focused on controlling her rage, and was trying to practice her stardust power, but didn't know what to do afterwards. Velgin, on the other hand, was practicing all her Ultimate Skills, waiting for them to be able to combine, but had no luck so far, and didn't know what was missing.
At this point, with all the training that Velgin was doing, she had adopted the same ruling style that Rimuru had, which was "Let the king reign, not govern"
Emilia had stepped up and started organizing most things with the help of [Solomon]. At first, she was against the yearly battles, since she wanted peace. But eventually, she realized that the benefits far outweighed the costs. She also tried to make peace treaties with various western nations, but was rejected every time, since they stupidly feared that signing any agreements would make them slaves of a Demon Lord.
About a year before the second Tenma War, Velgin called a meeting with her two older sisters, Velzard and Velgrynd.
Meeting at Velgin's new Brilliant Light Palace, which was made from a marble material that reflected all sorts of light, brightening the surrounding area non stop. It was built at the top of the only mountain within the Dragon Kingdom, but was far enough away from places where it wasn't visible.
"Long time no see, little sis! What's up?" Velgrynd asked the moment she arrived while jumping onto Velgin to give her a big hug.
"Calm down, you're too energetic," Velzard said, sitting and smirking at Velgrynd.
The two sisters were very passive aggressive with each other, but in reality, they only did this to lighten up the mood.
"Enough fighting," Velgin said, holding in her laugh. "By the way, the reason why I called this meeting was because I wanted to ask if I could analyze your Ultimate Skills. I've reached a bottle neck recently, so I wanted to ask for help."
Velgin lied. She was still improving at a fast rate, and although she did need a little assistance finding out how to make an Origin Skill, neither of the two dragons in front of her had the answer.
"Sure, I guess," Velgrynd said while shrugging. Velzard also nodded. Though both of True Dragons were confused, they didn't hesitate to help their youngest sibling, though she wouldn't be the youngest for much longer.
"Great, thanks!" Velgin said before activating [Sherlock]. Instead of asking for help though, her real goal was to analyze their Ultimate Skills in order to remove the part of them that could control them.
The moment she started editing their Ultimate Skills though, the two dragons noticed right away, and were about to stop Velgin, but then decided to let her do what she wanted. They truly believed that their little sister wouldn't hurt them, and Velgrynd went further to remove all the barriers that hindered Velgin.
The editing process only took a few seconds, though that was because she had a skill to increase her though speed.
Right away, the two dragons felt different. They didn't feel stronger; and their Magicule level stayed the same. Instead, their Ultimate Skills became more efficient, no longer having a backdoor access where they could be controlled.
Velgin partially explained what she did, telling the two that she wanted to observe their Ultimate Skills, and saw that both of them had some inefficiencies, which was why she changed them.
Velgrynd was very thankful getting up to give Velgin another hug. And although Velzard was grateful as well, she didn't show it.
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A year later, signs that the Tenma War was resuming had showed. Holy energy had spread all across the world's skies, concentrating above each of the major cities in the world besides those in the Eastern Empire.
Once again, Angels started appearing from gates in the sky. They rushed towards concentrated groups of any species, killing them all.
But this time was different than the last. Instead of steamrolling through the west, soldiers and knight from both the Western Holy Church, as well as the individual nations, had increased defenses of all major cities, stopping the Angels after only a few rounds of attacks.
In the south, southwest, and southeast, new powers emerged to protect their home cities and countries. Some sitting Demon Lords fell, but more potential Demon Lords rose from their demise.
But what interested Velgin the most was the coming of a new Orc Lord.
Of course, even if it evolved into an Orc Disaster, or a True Demon Lord Orc, it would still be a small fry compared to Velgin. But she felt that she could use this opportunity to wipe out a lot of the weaker Demon Lords who didn't truly belong there. It could also be used to strengthen the West's belief in Luminism, as well as give Chloe another achievement if she wanted to defeat it once Velgin was finished with it.
Travelling deep into the Great Forest of Jura, Velgin found the Orc Lord in a large grassy clearing. This unnamed Orc Lord was different from Geld in the anime, as surprisingly, he didn't have any subordinates. He had the Unique Skill [Starved], but wasn't using it to the fullest.
The unnamed Orc Lord wasn't even close to becoming an Orc Disaster, but Velgin could change that within a day.
Flying down to greet him, Velgin said, "Would you like to follow my, unnamed Orc? If you do, I could grant you all the power you desire."
The hungry Orc didn't hear what Velgin said, only seeing food fly up to him. But when he reached out to grab her, his arms were cut off before he could even blink.
The Orc didn't care and was waiting for his arms to regenerate. But a surprise was revealed when he noticed his arms didn't return.
"Become my subordinate!" Velgin declared, holding out her arm in a position that told the orc to grab it.
But instead, the unnamed Orc used his rot attributed tentacles to try to grab Velgin once again.
Of course, she simply cut those off as well, and they didn't regenerate.
"Last chance." Velgin said simply, no longer willing to waste her time.
But finally, the Orc said something. "I'm hungry, give me food."
That seemingly unrelated sentence was actually the Orc agreeing to follow Velgin, and she felt the agreement through her Ultimate Skills.
"Very good. Then from this day forth, you shall be known as Gelmund!" Velgin declared. She had picked the name of the idiot who tried to go against Rimuru, knowing that this Gelmund would also be sacrificed soon, but she didn't tell him. What she was doing to him seemed a little evil, but when she used [Future Prediction], she learned that if she didn't appear here, he would have died before the Tenma war ended, so really she was doing him a favor.
Bringing him around the forest, Velgin had Gelmund control all the Orcs that he could find, which wasn't that much since most were either in hiding or were dead from adventurers and Angels.
Gelmund also ate one of each species that they found, giving him the abilities of a Lizardman, a Goblin, Ogre, Dire wolf, and more. Velgin tried to get him to eat an Angel and Demon, but nothing happened.
After a full week of fighting, eating, and recruiting, Gelmund finally evolved into an Orc Disaster, a Special A rank monster, and was invited to the Demon Lord Council as a potential member.
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Back at the Dragon Kingdom, nothing much really changed.
This time, Angels did attack, but only North City. Some property got damaged, but overall, the defenses were able to hold.
Plus, once Zeldris appeared, none of the Angels were even able to be an annoyance, being defeated the moment they appeared.
And with that, the Dragon Kingdom was able to avoid disaster, unlike most of the Western Nations,
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Extra Authors Notes:
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
If you did, please give me a comment and add the story to your collection.
I'm going to try my best to read and reply to comments so if you have question, feel free to ask things.
If anyone has any suggestions for how I can improve my writing, I would love some advice.
Also, I'm going to include some time skips now, to get closer to the main plot.
