After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

But then again, is this many people enough?

Looking at the troops building the first United Nations military base on the continent of Orros, Yang Hao wondered if he should ask Theresa to send more people.

However, Fen and Naruja's complaints calmed him down.

"If this keeps happening... I think the people here will start to worry..."

“Exactly. Naruja knows all this. So Yang Hao, don’t expect the people of Isugard to be ignorant of these things.”

"Ugh... I feel like I'm really stupid in Fen's eyes..."

The clan chief muttered in frustration, and the little elf quickly comforted the deer girl by patting her head.

After thinking about it for a moment, Yang Hao also agreed.

After all, humans have a limit to their tolerance. Being able to accommodate over four hundred people jumping around in one's own home doesn't mean one can actually tolerate over four thousand people jumping around in one's home.

To avoid causing too much trouble for Miss Margarita, who was already overworked, Yang Hao decided to tell his family that this number of people was enough.

He needs to start dealing with things related to demons. But then again...?

What is Lalumia doing here?

Yang Hao turned around and looked at the corner of the room, puzzled.

After discovering that Lalumia was having a great time playing with Elena, who was sitting on his lap like a daughter, he realized that Lalumia was enjoying herself immensely.

He decided not to ask her the real reason for coming for the time being. After all, things seemed pretty good for now.

......

This occurred while Ysgard and the United Nations were preparing to fight against the demons.

Located more than 4,000 meters underground in the Isgard mine, the Demon Mother Nest, which survived the karmic fire brought by the Goddess of Fire, is slowly giving birth to its offspring while maintaining a spiritual connection with its brethren on another continent to confirm the changes in the world.

Perhaps it's because he just woke up, or perhaps it's because his brain was damaged by the previous fever.

This broodmother is adapting to the current demonic mental network much slower than its counterparts—even its demonic production rate is significantly slower.

But in a sense, this is good news.

The demon race has always been trapped in a production model focused on quantity. To the demon race, the quality of individuals seems to be a trivial matter; as long as the population size is large enough, sufficiently powerful individuals will inevitably emerge.

However, for the nest of Ysgard, it discovered that as long as it continued to focus on producing higher-quality offspring, in a sense, the efficiency of producing high-quality individuals could be maximized.

As a result, its energy consumption is much greater... The energy that could originally produce 1000 larvae can now only produce three larvae.

While the quality was indeed dozens of times higher, the difference in quantity still worried the demon.

Not to mention...

In this dark and narrow underground cavern.

It really can't find much [real food] to absorb and utilize.

Above, there is only black, flammable oil and coal that can be found in purgatory... Although absorbing coal can provide some of the energy needed for production, the lack of easily digestible food... will quickly cause the newly born chicks to starve to death.

We must first dig a passage to the surface... We need regular meat as food, and more importantly, we need to reunite with our companions...

So, where are your companions?

The Demon Mother Nest fell into thought.

As one of the oldest maternal lairs, the maternal lairs of Ysgard are different from other demonic maternal lairs that "grow in place".

It is an ancient demon that is over three thousand years old and was transferred directly from the demon's mother world, Purgatory.

As an old demon, it possesses knowledge that ordinary mother hives lack, knows how to adjust its situation according to the circumstances, and understands how to maintain its composure and make decisions based on the actual situation when the population is low.

Take the present as an example. If it were an ordinary demon mother nest, it would probably try to evolve organs that "eat dirt" to maintain its survival needs, right?

However, the Mother Nest knew very well that rather than wasting precious energy on meaningless evolution, it would be more practical to directly open a passage between the underground and the surface and plunder resources on the surface for rapid development.

Moreover, the Old Mother Nest also knows that time waits for no one.

Without knowing whether most of their companions had survived or whether the ground was still scorched earth, any hesitation would only sow the seeds of their own demise.

It must struggle to survive before time completely ends... to reunite with its kin who constantly provides it with life force from afar, and together create a great demonic enterprise.

[Insufficient food...unable to move, deep underground...evolutionary branch needs to be re-examined.]

To achieve this goal, the second thing the old demon did after ordering the larvae to begin digging the tunnel was to examine the current evolutionary branches of the demon population on the continent of Orros. This was to establish a foundation for the work to come and to coordinate with the mother nests in different regions.

On the one hand, it is common knowledge that the demon race has an "evolution limit". Even the demons themselves cannot solve this problem through any means other than "evolution". Therefore, under duress, they have already developed a strategic plan of "cooperating based on their strengths".

On the other hand, different continents have different ecological environments, and different ecological environments require different evolutionary branches to adapt to them—just as demons that live in the deep sea must evolve gills and fins, rather than evolving limbs that are more suitable for living on land... If the Old Mother Nest wants to survive on the continent of Orros in the present day, it is essential to choose an evolutionary path that is suitable for its own species.

Unfortunately, the evolutionary data left behind by the mother nest network on the continent of Orros was completely burned away by a fire thousands of years ago.

Aside from the basic evolutionary branches, the only distinctive features left for the Mother Nest are the Demon Carapace, adapted to the high-pressure underground environment, and the Fire-resistant Skin, which has extremely high resistance to fire and physical attacks.

It needs to retrace almost its entire journey from scratch. Without other creatures to learn from, this would take an extremely long time.

...The Old Mother's Nest can accept such low efficiency. If it's truly impossible to find a single living creature in the world above, and if even a single living creature cannot be [captured and studied]... then it also means that the home of demons has been established.

But unfortunately.

There appear to still be enemies on the ground.

【...】

A message came from our exhausted compatriots in the distance.

The message was filled with the aura of a dying demon. The Mother Nest gratefully accepted it, and after analyzing it, it drew a conclusion.

There is still life in this world. And those lives seem to be uniting to prepare for a fight against the demons.

...

The Old Mother Nest does not dislike creatures other than demons.

It likes chicken very much because it tastes delicious.

It likes people very much because the changes in people are so great that they can cause even more changes in demons.

It liked the saint very much. Because the saint's spirit of sacrifice made it realize that there were other races that could be like demons, willing to make any sacrifice for their kind and the world.

So after discovering that life still exists on Earth, that humans still exist, and that enemies still exist.

The mother nest is genuinely happy.

But—being happy doesn't mean it will lose its sense of direction.

No matter how much you like something, it is still an enemy of the demon race.

To prevent the demon race from perishing in the frigid world, the Mother's Nest will once again engage in fierce battle with its adversaries.

But it also knows that it is getting old.

I don't have much energy left to use.

It is even less likely that they will confront the enemy head-on.

One's overweight body can indeed become an obstacle for the other party to pinpoint one's location.

[Leaving only a birth canal, essential life-sustaining organs, and vital feeding organs...]

The old mother nest is planning what needs to be removed from her body.

The severed area can directly evolve into a "Mindless Demon" for cultivating mushrooms... Although it provides very little energy and nutrients, it should be able to sustain its activities for a period of time without much problem.

I need more individuals to gather everything we need... I need to learn how humans use minerals and other materials... I must dig a tunnel to the surface as soon as possible to capture valuable humans for me to learn from...

[...As my compatriot just mentioned, who is the most crucial individual human being?]

The old mother nest paused for a moment.

After carefully considering who the individual mentioned by its fellow human was, it elevated that human individual to the highest level in its mind.

Either capture and assimilate.

Either kill them outright.

The mother nest chose the latter.

Because it is visible to the naked eye that humans of this level cannot be easily captured.

The devil must not give the enemy a chance.

It lies hidden underground, watching the rock strata above with predatory eyes, waiting for the moment when the larvae will carve through the passage.

...... ......

Meanwhile, on the surface, the United Nations' magic forces finally moved into the camps around the mines, much to the delight of the Isgard people, and installed the artificial magic reactor there.

Although it is a long distance from the coast, considering that this artificial magic reactor can also be used in the future, the magical dolls simply used a small teleportation portal to connect the reactor directly to the ocean pipeline, so that the reactor can generate electricity inland far from the coast.

After the artificial magic reactor began generating magic, and all the necessary equipment to fight the demons was indeed set up in the surrounding area.

Yang Hao and his companions arrived at the scene in person. While watching the mine pit spewing fire from afar, they were filled with emotion. At the same time, he pondered how the demon would react to this.

After all, based on his experience fighting demons several times, he had long regarded demons as formidable enemies who were even more intelligent than humans.

Especially considering the demon's powerful evolutionary capabilities and the virtually limitless [upper limit] on a single attribute, he became even more wary of demons.

"...We must be prepared for the demons to turn around and dig tunnels from underground to fight us like guerrillas."

Yang Hao sighed, took the handkerchief Lalumia handed him to wipe his face, and said that he might need to check with Margarita again to confirm the situation.

If they were to go deeper into the mine pit, the natural gas currently burning there would be far too difficult to handle—even if they used magic to freeze it, with a large amount of natural gas still remaining inside, the magical puppets wouldn't dare use anything flammable or hot down there, even if they did find traces of the demon.

On the other hand, if we were to dig directly downwards from flat ground, it would waste too much time and effort... Moreover, if we were to dig into the cavity where the mother nest is located, that would be fine, but if we were to dig into an oil or gas layer, it would mean that the precious time that could not be wasted would be completely wasted.

...So Yang Hao needs Margarita's help.

He needed Margarita to use political means to recruit explorers familiar with the nearby mines into his team, and if possible, even better if they could send him the mineral vein secrets that were crucial to Isgard...

"That's fine then."

He gestured for everyone to wait nearby, then shouted a few times at a black dragon that was wandering around the camp, and received a reply from the dragon:

1. There's no need to worry about the explorers. Margarita has already been engaged in political activities. If nothing unexpected happens, some high-value miners and explorers from private companies will arrive at the camp tomorrow morning to guide Yang Hao.

2. There's nothing wrong with the state secrets of Issugard. It's just that Margarita needs more time to communicate with the State Department bureaucrats.

"So, my Secretary of State, please wait a little while. After all, it seems there's no use in rushing things now."

"Why do I feel like it's my house that's being bombed, not yours? Why are you acting so calm?"