The deeper they went, the smaller the snowflakes falling from the sky. And the temperature in the environment became lower and lower.
Under Razthan’s lead, Roy reached the highest peak, and the temperature had fallen to -120°C. A thick layer of ice already covered the mountain rock, reflecting a dirty light under the gray sky.
This made Roy disdain this place even more. It was true that the environment here was one of the few places in the Abyss suitable for frost demons to inhibit, but this dirty snow environment was not what he wanted.
“Lord Osiris, we’re here!” Razthan’s voice came from the side as he pointed at an enormous cave in the middle of the main peak.
The entrance of this enormous cave was shaped into a ferocious demon head by hard ice crystals, and the open mouth full of sharp teeth was the passage to the entrance. Roy folded his wings and followed Razthan into the cave. Unexpectedly, there was a sloping staircase inside. It seemed that Anivia’s hall was in the middle of this peak.
This was the first time Roy had visited a demon lord’s ‘home’. He had been wondering how Anivia would welcome him, but what he did not expect was that when he entered the bottom of the cave, he saw… a gigantic ice coffin!
The ice coffin was placed vertically on the mountain wall, and it was surrounded by dark blue ice crystals. These ice crystals looked very hard and sharp, standing upright like a mountain of swords. In this chaotic environment, the gigantic and regular rectangular ice coffin was quite conspicuous. Roy looked at it and estimated that the ice coffin was about thirty meters tall and twenty meters thick. Under the endless cold aura, the interior of the ice coffin was vaguely visible.
Inside the ice coffin was a tall demon. His lower limbs were reverse hooves, and all his muscles bulged. A pair of large demon wings wrapped around him from behind, enveloping his body. He stood in the ice coffin and seemed to be sleeping, but when Roy came in, he seemed to have sensed his aura, so he was gradually waking up, causing the ice coffin to shake slightly.
This shaking eventually caused countless cracks to appear on this gigantic ice coffin, and cracking sounds rang out continuously. Finally, the tall demon flapped his wings and turned it into innumerable fragments that shot out in all directions.
Some of the ice fragments inevitably shot at Roy, but before they could hit him, a black ice wall blocked them. On the other hand, Razthan did not dare to use his magic power to block these fragments. They smashed into him until his head was bleeding, but he did not dare to make a sound.
“Anivia, this is not a good way of greeting!” Roy said sarcastically as he waved his hand and dispersed the ice wall in front of him.
With a loud bang, Anivia emerged from the ice coffin and landed on the ice in front of Roy. He crouched down on all fours, supported his upper body with his arms, and looked down at Roy.
Demon Lord Anivia was much bigger than Roy. Even if he was crouching like this, he was nearly ten meters tall. The pair of ice-blue demon wings behind him spread out, almost filling the cave. Due to the frost demon bloodline, his skin was blue as well, but compared to Razthan and the others, Anivia’s entire body was almost crystallized. At first glance, it looked as though he was wearing frost armor.
He stared at Roy for a while before speaking in a strange voice that sounded like ice rubbing against one another. “A young… demon lord? No wonder Razthan brought you here… He did not dare to defy you, right?”
Razthan was trembling on the ice, not daring to move.
Roy waved his hand. “Don’t worry. I didn’t come with any ill intentions. Your appearance is the True Name Liberation state, right? This won’t do. It’ll be difficult for us to communicate like this! Don’t tell me you want me to keep looking up at you?”
Hearing Roy’s indifferent tone, Anivia seemed to be a little angry. He could not help but raise his right fist and smash the ice on the ground. The immense force shattered the layer of ice into pieces.
Lowering his head, Anivia moved his huge hideous head close to Roy. “Be careful with your words, young demon lord. I, Anivia, have been a demon lord for more than four hundred years. It’s not something a young man like you can compare with!” “Hmph!” Roy snorted coldly. He suddenly spread his three pairs of demon wings, and his entire body was brimming with magic power. He said sharply to Anivia, “Before threatening me, hide the wound on your abdomen, old man!”
Anivia was stunned when he heard this. He lowered his head and looked at his abdomen. As expected, he saw a black line on his abdomen. Although it was no longer bleeding, it had not healed.
Knowing that Roy had seen his injury, Anivia hesitated for a moment before retracting his head. A powerful cold aura spread, and his body quickly shrank, finally becoming a demon about four meters tall.
“Tell me, Demon Lord Osiris, why did you come to find me?” Anivia asked unkindly while walking closer. “Although I’m injured, if you want to seize my territory, you’d better think carefully!” “You actually know my name. It seems that you weren’t completely ignorant about the outside world while you were recuperating…” Roy sneered. “Don’t worry. Just like I said, this dirty environment is not what I want.”
Anivia snorted, and a cold aura emerged from his nostrils. He waved his hand, and two enormous frost thrones condensed on the ground. He invited Roy to sit.
After Roy sat down, Anivia suddenly raised his leg and kicked Razthan’s abdomen, sending him flying. He crashed into an icicle at the top of the cave like a cannonball, shattering the icicle into pieces. But even so, Razthan was not dead. He struggled to get up and said tremblingly, “Thank… thank you, Lord Anivia…”
He knew that this was Anivia’s punishment for bringing Roy here. But since Anivia did not kill him and only used this method to punish him, it meant that Anivia had forgiven him.
“Get out!” Facing Razthan’s gratitude, Anivia cursed. Without daring to say anything else, Razthan hurriedly struggled out of the cave.
Roy did not say anything while watching this scene. He knew that this was Anivia’s own matter. He could only be regarded as a guest, so he could not express any opinion. After seeing Anivia walk to the throne opposite him and sit down, Roy said, “Okay, Anivia, tell me about the situation now. I just completed the promotion ritual in another world, and after returning to the Abyss, I was teleported to this level. I still don’t know many things, so I want to find someone to know about the situation.”
“What’s there to say?” Anivia snorted. “Just as you saw, this level of the Abyss has been shattered into countless space bubbles. Since you’ve become a demon lord, you can choose one of these fragment worlds as your territory. Do I need to say more about such a simple matter?”
“Of course I know what to do, but what I want to know is the situation of these fragment worlds!” Roy said. “Is every space bubble connected to other spaces?”
“No, there are also completely independent spaces, but very few!” At this moment, Anivia’s anger seemed to have subsided a little “There are about a hundred demon lords still in the Abyss. They all have their own territories, and these territories generally connect to other spaces at the faults, so most demon lords have ‘neighbors’!”
“Oh? Does that mean that ‘neighbor disputes’ often happen?” Roy asked curiously.
“Of course!” Anivia said. “Because every lord only occupies a small place, no matter how large their territories are, resources are limited. Perhaps what you want is only available in someone else’s territory. Under such circumstances, what do you do?”
Roy pondered for a moment. “Negotiate with the neighbor?”
“Hmph, what a good joke!” Anivia snorted. “But what if your neighbor is unwilling to negotiate?”
“Then you can only snatch it!” Roy spread his hands.
“That’s right. You can only snatch it!” Anivia nodded. “There are many strange minerals in this Abyss level, but even demon lords can’t dig personally, right? Therefore, population is needed. Under normal circumstances, the lords will order the monsters in their territories or summon some demons who are loyal to them from the upper levels of Abyss to dig these resources. The neighbor disputes of the lords often revolve around population and minerals.”
“The wound on your body…” Roy pointed at the wound on his abdomen. “Was it caused by a neighbor dispute?” Anivia shook his head. “No, it’s not. In fact, the origin of this wound is worse than the neighbor disputes.”
“What do you mean?” Roy asked curiously. “There’s a group of people, or rather, a group of demons. They’ve been hunting frost demons for nearly a hundred years!” Anivia said hatefully. “The wound on my body was caused during a battle with them…”
“Huh?!” Roy immediately became vigilant. “Hunting frost demons?! What do you mean?”
“It’s literally what it means!” Anivia glanced at Roy and said gloatingly, “Osiris, you are also of the frost demon bloodline, so you have to be careful. These demons are quite powerful, and perhaps they belong to a demon king. There are no less than twenty demon lords among them. They’ve been searching for frost demons for more than a hundred years, and they haven’t even let go of a demon lord like me…”
“What are they hunting frost demons for?” Roy asked with a frown.
“Blood!” Anivia said. “These demons seem to be attacking a powerful world and want to destroy it. But they appear to have encountered a tremendous obstacle and can’t advance at all, so they thought of a crooked method. They want to use the blood of us frost demons to create a massive army of undead…”
