Chapter 9: Customer Is Always Right... Haha!

Chapter 9: Customer Is Always Right... Haha! Ragnar Vhagar, Demon King and aspiring tyrant, stood with his arms crossed, watching a squad of five kobolds march in a semi-straight line. The cold resolve he had forged in the slimy waters of the Slime Pool had settled deep in his bones. The panic was still there, a cold, hard marble in his gut, but it was no longer in charge. Now, it was just fuel. He had spent the last two weeks in a grim, repetitive cycle: generate monsters, train them, and analyze the results. It was like the world’s most depressing management simulation game. His D-Rank Creation skill allowed him to slowly replenish his army, and his B-Rank Alchemy skill sat uselessly, a gleaming testament to his one moment of butter-fingered stupidity. He couldn’t create legendary swords out of thin air, a fact that annoyed him to no end. "I’m a master blacksmith with no forge, no anvil, and no metal," he grumbled to himself. "It’s like being the world’s greatest chef with nothing but a packet of ketchup and a dirty sock." His gaze narrowed on the kobolds. They were his best investment. Unlike the goblins, who were vicious but disorganized, the kobolds could be trained. They understood formations, they could use weapons, and they only sniffed each other’s butts during their designated break times. He had spent a small fortune of his slowly regenerating Creation Points to equip this lead squad with crude, heavy clubs he’d designed in his head. "Alright, you five," he commanded, his voice echoing in the stone Mess Hall. "Your opponents are the five wolves from yesterday. Don’t disappoint me." The five kobolds, led by one he’d named Grunt for his constant low growling, let out a series of sharp, disciplined barks. Across the room, five snarling, gray wolves pawed at the ground, their eyes locked on the dog-faced humanoids. "Begin!" Ragnar yelled. The effect was instantaneous and terrifying. BOOM! The ground trembled as the five kobolds charged in perfect unison. They didn’t run like a wild pack... they moved like a single, five-headed engine of destruction. The air itself seemed to split apart around them, shrieking with the force of their advance. Grunt was at the front, his club held high. The wolves, feral and powerful, met the charge with a wave of claws and teeth. Grunt brought his club down. It wasn’t just a swin, it was a focused detonation of E-Rank strength. A miniature sonic boom, a sharp CRACK!, erupted from the head of the club as it transformed into a blur of motion. BOOM! The club collided with the lead wolf’s skull. The impact exploded. A visible shockwave of force, a white ripple in the air, blasted outwards from the point of contact. The wolf’s body was thrown backward like a ragdoll, its bones audibly shattering from the sheer kinetic energy. The shockwave hit the other wolves, making them stagger. Grunt took two heavy steps back from the resultant force, his arm vibrating, but he stood his ground. The other four kobolds followed his lead, their clubs crashing down in a synchronized, percussive rhythm of violence. More shockwaves rippled through the hall, and the constant sonic booms made Ragnar’s ears ring. The fight was over in less than ten seconds. Five wolves lay broken and still on the stone floor. Ragnar nodded slowly, a grimly satisfied look on his face. "Note to self: equipped kobolds are brutally effective. Main infantry secured." He dismissed the squad, who barked and began dragging the wolf carcasses away, presumably for dinner. The grim reality was that his dungeon needed to be self-sufficient. With his defense strategy solidifying, another, more complex problem gnawed at him. It was a problem born from his years of gaming. He sat on his uncomfortable obsidian throne and pulled out his phone, a habit he couldn’t break. He scrolled through the news, which was still a mess of hero propaganda and monster attack footage. "The problem," he muttered, "is difficulty scaling." He thought about a notoriously hard game he had once tried to play. The first boss was so punishingly difficult that he had quit after three hours and never touched it again. His dungeon was the same. If the very first heroes to walk through his door were met by a perfectly drilled squad of skull-crushing kobolds, they would die instantly. And then what? The news of his impossible deathtrap would spread. No one else would come. No heroes meant no experience points. No experience points meant he’d be stuck at Level 1 forever. And no dead heroes meant no dropped gear, which meant his B-Rank Alchemy would remain a glorified, expensive hobby. "I’ll die of boredom and starvation before a real threat ever arrives," he realized. "I don’t just need to kill them. I need to farm them. I need to make them want to come here." His dungeon couldn’t be a brick wall. It had to be a funnel. It needed to be alluring. Challenging, but not impossible. It needed to give them a taste of victory, a little bit of hope, right before Grunt’s club introduced their face to the concept of terminal velocity. An idea, born from the darkest, most terminally online corners of his brain, began to form. He needed to manage his brand. He needed to do some marketing. He opened his web browser and typed in a few keywords: "Demon King forum," "Aegis Mandate help," "how to stop goblins from licking everything." To his surprise, he found one. It was a crudely designed website, black with flaming green text, called [The Under-Realm]. It was clearly a message board for members of the Chaos faction. He created a burner account..*DemonLord69 * and started reading. It was a goldmine of idiocy. User: KingGrocknar Subject: Help! My True Core is in the back of my fridge and it melted all the ice cream! My slimes are tracking sticky puddles everywhere. How do I fix this? User: BaronVonStab Subject: Do your kobolds also try to chase cars? I live in a converted parking garage and it’s a serious problem. One of them almost got hit by a Hero on a moped. User: QueenAlyssa_Official Subject: To all the lesser Demon Lords in the Kanto region, bend the knee now and I may spare your pathetic existences. My domain is a testament to beauty and power. Yours are probably dirty apartments. Ragnar scrolled for an hour, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. Most of these Demon Kings were morons. They were leaking valuable information, complaining about mundane problems, and puffing up their chests like peacocks. They had no strategy, no long-term vision. They were just flailing. This was his edge. He wasn’t just a Demon King; he was a gamer. He understood systems. He understood psychology. And he understood the internet. He logged out of his burner account and started to formulate a plan. He would control the narrative. He would leak information, but it would be his information. He would build a reputation for his dungeon, not as an impossible meat grinder, but as a "high-risk, high-reward farm." A place where low-level heroes could come to test their skills, maybe even get a cool piece of gear, and feel like they accomplished something, even as he was carefully calculating their 80% casualty rate. He looked over at the entrance to his dungeon, a dark, yawning archway. He would line the first corridor with a few pathetic, jiggly slimes. Easy kills. A confidence booster. Then, a room with some unarmed goblins, a real fight that the heroes could probably win, but they’d take some damage. He would even place a treasure chest in that room. He couldn’t make a magic sword yet, but he could probably smelt some rocks into a lumpy, but usable, iron dagger. It would be just enough to make them feel lucky. It was a cold, calculating, and deeply cynical plan. He wasn’t just building a fortress. He was designing an abattoir with good public relations. "The customer is always right," Ragnar whispered to the empty throne room, a dangerous glint in his eye. "And in my business, the customer is always dying." The source of this content is freew(e)bn(o)vel