Translator:imperfectluckEditor:Kurisu
The Onibabas’ market had a well-known terrible reputation that spread far and wide. When the Sword Saint from another dimension foolishly entered the Onibabas’ wooden home, everyone else in the market could only sigh.
“Welp. He hasn’t come out for more than twenty minutes now. I guess he’ll never come out of there at all.”
“What a pity. We won’t be able to get anything.”
That was right, they weren’t pitying the Sword Saint victim, but rather the fact that they wouldn’t get anything out of him. It was likely that the Onibabas would strip the Sword Saint’s body of anything valuable, not leaving a single thing behind.
However, everyone was truly astonished several minutes later.
That outsider actually walked out of the Onibabas’ wooden home completely unscathed. Not only that, he seemed to be chatting and smiling with the Onibabas.
Not only did this outsider from the mortal plane remain uninjured, all those vicious Onibabas actually surrounded him and were obviously sucking up to him.
Could it be that the Onibabas had changed their ways? That was obviously impossible. In that case, there was only one logical conclusion. A fight of some sort must have occurred inside the wooden house, and the outsider must have achieved an absolutely crushing victory.
Being able to defeat the evil and vicious Onibabas in their home territory meant that this outsider was likely a major personage.
Naturally, everyone now viewed the outsider in a different light. Instead of seeing him as a fat sheep to be slaughtered, they were now filled with fear of him.
Meanwhile, I was quite satisfied with the “deal” I had made.
In that circular arena, with countless undead watching and cheering me on, the deal with the Onibabas naturally proceeded quite smoothly and happily... At least, I was quite happy about it.
What exactly was that arena, you ask? Where did all the spectating undead come from? That would be a long story.
Previously, you remember that I had an earlier fight against Conservation’s undead army in my Hell, right? Back then, although my personal Hell impeded the undead army’s progress, the next development made me feel rather helpless. The undead discovered that they could freely enter or exit my personal Hell’s boundaries, meaning that my personal Hell became almost tactically worthless for stopping the army. In the end, I had to create an ice wall to slow down the undead.
That had given me the inspiration for this.
That was right. While it was possible for others to freely enter or exit my personal Hell, something I was helpless about, couldn’t I simply just surround the boundaries with a wall?
And so, I decided to create a wall. My design plans went from normal castle walls to the Great Wall of China, to even more ridiculous plans like copying sphinxes and pyramids from Egypt. In the end, I finally settled upon a circular Roman gladiator arena style.
A gladiator arena seemed quite excellent to me. As long as I decorated it properly, it would make my personal Hell world appear just like a Soul World specially created for one on one duels. In that case, it was highly likely that most enemies I dragged in here would think that this was an inescapable Soul World, so they wouldn’t even attempt to escape.
With countless undead workers helping me out, the construction finished quite swiftly. After that, I left the undead workers behind as spectators in the arena, which would also make any unfortunate individuals locked in my arena feel more pressure and realism.
As for where my undead workers came from? That would be a story for another time.
Hey, my ridiculous idea was actually highly effective. When the Onibabas found themselves trapped in my arena, they almost peed themselves in fear as they were all absolutely terrible at melee fights. The rest of the business discussion concluded quite easily. As long as I gave them all the makeup products in my possession, they would let me have any of their wares that I wanted. They would also tell me the location of some teleportation portals as they weren’t big secrets. They told me the location of ten portals in this level right away.
The Onibabas did have some actual good products. At the very least, their rare and abnormal dark resources and cursed items truly surprised me.
In fact, afterwards, the Onibabas even recommended that I start a trade route with them for long-term trading. They probably felt that as long as they could obtain those bottles with miraculous liquid from me, even if they were only being the middlemen, they could still suck other Onibabas’ wallets and treasuries dry to make up for their losses to me.
I was rather tempted by this idea. If I could really establish this trade route, it would be truly profitable for me.
The potential profits to be had in dimensional trading were truly that outrageous. Selling a rock for the price of its weight in gold wouldn’t even be anything special. Selling an ordinary vegetable for the price of a house would be far closer to the norm.
But, when I thought about how I would have to somehow find a powerful individual to protect this trade route, traveling thousands of kilometers all the way through the levels in the Chaos Abyss, slaying demons and dragons along the way, dealing with all sorts of dangers, possibly losing many companions to death and injury along the way, all for the purpose of smuggling a certain type of white powder in jars and bottles... Cough, I was referring to makeup products, of course! Why did it seem like my joke this time fell rather flat?
“If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s far too difficult to travel around the Chaos Abyss, and that it’s too troublesome to owe Amelia any favors, you probably would have instantly agreed. Who cares if you’re smuggling makeup products? As long as you can make money, you don’t have any shame whatsoever.”
Indeed, ordinary wood spirit products would never be so effective. It was even likely that they would be completely ineffective down in the Chaos Abyss due to having opposing properties. While I could directly obtain top-level wood spirit products by asking Amelia, the Mother Goddess of the wood spirits, I would owe her a great amount for this.
But would it kill Harloys not to say that out loud so directly? She had to be still heartbroken about losing all her makeup. I told her already that it was meaningless for slimes to apply makeup and that it would make me seem like I was crazy. Women were so unreasonable... Ouch! Please stop biting my head!
“Don’t you know that there’s a certain female main character who kept biting heads and acting the role of a pet so much that she lost her sensation of being a female lead and that a dark horse female character succeeded in usurping her position? Damn it, I said stop biting me! Why are you even evolving tentacles and whips!? I don’t have such heavy tastes!”
“Milord, it’s almost noontime. Would you like to eat lunch here and try our special swamp potluck?”
While fighting with the silly cat on my head, I still had to deal with the Onibabas’ overly sycophantic invitations. As for eating here, I decided against testing my own poison and curse resistance abilities.
Information could sometimes be considered the most valuable product of all. But when one’s life was at stake, information not personally related to oneself would no longer be as important. The Onibabas who had ruled here for countless years indeed gave me the locations of a dozen teleportation portals. However, I didn’t dare to use them so easily.
This wasn’t because I was a coward. This was the caution that any dimensional traveler would need to have. Dimensional teleportation would forever be one of the best assassination methods available. It wouldn’t even be that dangerous to be teleported into vacuum with no breathable air. In comparison, you would really cry if you found yourself teleported to the dinner table of a Chaos Main God.
Considering how I obtained this teleportation portal information and how famous Onibabas were for holding grudges, even if there were some safe portals among all these locations, only two or three at the very most would actually be safe.
In order to avoid having the Onibabas instantly sell the information of what I wanted to actually do here, I told them that my real goal was to go to the 102nd level of the Chaos Abyss. There was a very large neutral city there, one of the truly few safe locations in the Chaos Abyss, so this would be quite believable. And, this level was only two floors away from my true goal of the 100th level. According to the Onibabas, the safest and most reliable portal near here just happened to go directly to the 101st level, a lucky occurrence.
“Milord, the dark dwarves have control of the two-way teleportation portal leading to the 101st level, the Wild Cliffs. The dark dwarves directly trade mining resources and magical gems to the elemental creatures living in the 101st level. That’s also why the dark dwarves here have such an advanced smithing industry and how their tribe became so powerful.”
I also saw through the Onibabas’ intentions with this. They were no good individuals who loved to help others...
“But, it didn’t seem like the dark dwarves were doing so well here. Is it because of that powerful Bloodspear lizardmen tribe?”
Lizardmen also had a terrible reputation. When they were weak, they were quite happy to be slaves for other species. But when they were strong, they would treat other species as food and slaves instead.
That merchant from the Bloodspear lizardmen tribe dared to act so arrogantly already at the Onibabas’ market. I highly doubted that the Onibabas be happy to see the Bloodspear tribe becoming stronger and more difficult to deal with.
Lizardmen society was quite primitive. They used weapons made of bone and worshiped totems, similar to primitive beastmen societies. The lizardmen didn’t know how to make metal weapons and could only purchase them.
The lizardmen were currently buying weapons on the market, and dark dwarves were quite renowned for smithing weapons. It was quite noticeable how the Bloodspear tribe wasn’t trying to purchase from the dark dwarves. And, the fact that the dark dwarf from earlier had risked so much to purchase my martial arts books was the best evidence of how the dark dwarf tribe here was in a dangerous situation.
Were there truly no other more appropriate teleportation portals around here? I felt that it was far more likely that the Onibabas had told me of this one intentionally, hoping that I would get involved in the tussle between the lizardmen and the dark dwarves so that the powerful Bloodspear lizardmen tribe would suffer.
“Your wisdom is as deep as the endless void. However, I can swear in the name of the magnificent Great Demon God Daar that the dark dwarves’ teleportation portal is absolutely the safest teleportation level around here.”
There were countless strange Evil Gods and False Gods in the Chaos Abyss. But since Black Seven was swearing an oath to the God that she worshipped, then this information was probably real.
I shrugged. Truthfully, it didn’t really matter to me either way. Every teleportation portal would be guarded by someone regardless. It would be mostly the same no matter which I went to. In the Chaos Abyss, being powerful was the only way to travel without hindrance.
Lizardmen wouldn’t be difficult for me to deal with. But since the Onibabas wanted me to do something that would help them, they would need to show me some proof of their sincerity. So, I was hesitating on what else to extort from them.
At this moment, two Onibabas suddenly hurried over and whispered many things to Black Seven.
I saw how Black Seven’s expression constantly changed as she kept looking at me while listening to her underlings’ report. Her expression went from fake sycophancy to astonishment, then to confusion and disbelief, and finally finishing with fear and despair.
“You, you, you...”
“What? You’ve found out the information about me? Everything I told you was the truth. Why didn’t you believe me?”
This was exactly what I expected. No matter how famous I was in the mortal plane, the Onibabas who lived as hermits in the Chaos Abyss likely wouldn’t know about me. They hadn’t moved out of this level for several centuries already, so what they knew about the mortal plane would be extremely outdated.
And since I had “proved” my power, the Onibabas would naturally go out and obtain as much information about me as they possibly could in order to ascertain what attitude they should treat me with. Since I had told them my real name as well as the fact that my younger brother was a Chaos Main God, it would be truly pathetic if they still couldn’t find any information on me.
Black Seven was so frightened that she shrunk into herself. She knew that she had just been on the edge of death. This seemingly nice and foolish young man was actually one of the greatest villains around.
Yongye, the only new Undead Emperor to appear in recent times. He was known as a demon king who’d almost destroyed the entire mortal plane. He was an existence that not even the Gods would dare to antagonize. Just what was he doing here? If only Black Seven had known that he was Yongye, she would have given him anything he wanted so that he would leave as soon as possible!
After a long while, the elderly Onibaba finally managed to force herself to squeeze out a few words.
“Hello, dear Emperor, it’s almost lunchtime. Would you like to eat something? How about trying our special swamp potluck...”
However, her words were still almost exactly the same rubbish as earlier...
‘Damn, am I really that scary? I’m clearly a very friendly person who’s easy to get along with! I haven’t been an Undead Emperor for many years already! Should I perform some Holy Light tricks for her? They’re really bright and shiny!’
I did my best to maintain my sunny smile and walked forward, intending to explain just how friendly and easy to get along with I was. I was about to tell them that their information on me was outdated, but right when I took my first step...
“Ahhhh!”
Onibaba Black Seven shrieked at the top of her lungs as if she had been cursed by a banshee. She immediately threw away her staff and ran at top speed, with each step being three strides long. She was as agile as a young man in the prime of youth.
My smile froze on my face...
My eyes started twitching when I saw how fast Black Seven was running away. Meanwhile, the other two Onibabas were trying their best to smile while backing up slowly, although it made them look more like they were crying.
“Pahaha!”
I turned around, only to see the silly cat rolling around on the floor while laughing. As always, she unhesitatingly mocked me right in front of my face. I gave her full points for suicidal tendencies.
I transformed my cat into a ball and threw her away. I then took a deep breath, maintained my friendly smile, turned around again, and...
The formerly bustling street was now completely empty!
Nobody in the Onibaba market was an idiot. They all knew just how powerful and vicious the Onibaba Black Seven was around these parts. Anyone who could scare her so much was likely even stronger than the Snake God of this dimensional level.
How should you react when you meet a dangerous existence in the Chaos Abyss?
The completely empty street was the best example of the wisest method. Black Seven showed everyone the method, and everyone else unhesitatingly copied her.
“Wait a moment, I wanted to do some shopping...”
A gust of wind blew past me; not a single individual responded. Only a few chained slaves remained behind, looking at me with helpless expressions.
Ahaha, a wolfman actually lay down on the ground and revealed his stomach while sticking out his tongue. Was this his wolf instincts, showing submission to me?
I truly felt sad about how all the merchants on this street had run away. And so, I vented my sadness by going on a shopping spree for myself. I brought out a large sack and started collecting whatever I wanted...
“Since these merchants don’t want their wares anymore, I’ll be nice enough to put away their things for them...”
[So shameless! This must have been your scheme from the very beginning! Even I, your System, can’t watch this anymore!]

Comments

Loading...