Mage And Wolf
Chapter 236

Chapter 236: Chapter 236

Even with the guests gone, the chaos around us doesn’t stop. The demons need to be given the updated agreement and there have been a number of attacks on city officials, all seemingly looking for me, Karl and Lelou. Our best guess is that the Cult hasn’t given up on trying to change the oracle’s vision by killing us. The Titan clan would be impressed with their dedication, though disappointed with their failure.

The first task is to go see the demons, as they’re likely to at least be civil. If only Steve was still here, he likes the Succubus style of negotiating. Instead we’ll have to actually talk to the Queen and convince her to stop bringing cursed items to earth.

Karl is insistent that we take the Toyota, despite being able to simply open a portal directly to the city, so we’re headed to the parking garage with duffel bags full of gear for nostalgia sake. Yeah, we could throw them in our storage rings, but walking up to the faithful Toyota gun truck, or more correctly its twin replacement, empty handed would have just felt wrong. Lelou is joining us, thinking that everyone who is being targeted heading out of the city will likely be safer for the non cultivating locals, but she doesn’t have much experience traveling in automobiles.

She’s been able to travel faster with her own wings since before trucks were invented, so it makes sense, but she’s really excited to see what it was like to be on a planet with no cultivation, like we’re demonstrating a historical relic. That’s a sad thought, the entire concept of the pickup truck is becoming obsolete for a large chunk of the population.

Karl is thinking the same thing, given the way he’s looking at the vehicle, but he quickly hops in the driver’s seat while Lelou takes shotgun and I get in the box to man the big gun.

Karl made new Immortal Realm grade ammunition, so Goddess help anything that gets in our way. He even made me a couple of new pistols for the entertainment value. Nobody expects the Immortal Realm cultivator to shoot them.

I wave to all the familiar faces as we head for the spire, and the portals underneath. One heads to a location near the city formerly known as Sioux Falls, which is now home to a great number of demons. I was hoping to get a chance to check on the dungeons around Arcana city, which are still being farmed daily as a natural resource, but driving all the way there before leaving would be a huge waste of time.

Maybe later.

The lineup waiting for the portals parts to let the city vehicle through, waving at me as we pass through. I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen most of these particular people, so either Arcana has stayed a very friendly small town atmosphere sort of city, or nobody wants to upset the woman with the machine gun.

When we pass through the portal, we find that what was formerly a small outpost has turned into a full fledged Sin City on par with Las Vegas. Huge Hotels, Casinos, bars, race tracks of every kind. And that’s not even counting the ’Totally not a brothel’ Dual Cultivation resorts that cater to traveling dual cultivators and visiting Succubus alike.

According to Lelou, the Succubus Queen will be meeting us here in a conference room at a hotel, instead of having us drive through the more dangerous areas around the city itself where their home Realm’s Demonic nature forces a constant spawn of monsters.

"Welcome Highnesses to the Royal Delights Hotel and Casino. We have been expecting you. Right this way please." The Incubus in a tuxedo that serves as the door man to the hotel greets us, leading the way to the very first room in the main floor, Conference Room A.

Inside a few dozen demons await, a few lesser nobles with their Queen and a bunch of paper pushers to look over the proposal we’ve come up with. The negotiation team that has been working on this problem has been getting nowhere, but they seem at least a little hopeful that I might have brought them something good, after me and Karl worked out the initial deal.

"Thanks for seeing us on short notice. I was talking with the Nephilim King from the Divine Plane I’ve been spending time on lately, and he came up with a great idea." I greet them with a smile, laying a stack of copies of the proposal on the desk.

The bureaucrats are all over that in seconds, scanning through every line, looking for tricks, loopholes and changes from the previous proposals. There are a number of small changes, both in details and wording, but the one big one is about the import of magical artifacts from the Demon Realm, opening up trade, on the condition that all items are decursed first, and allowing the cleansed items to be used as tender within the outpost.

The demons have trinkets that store cultivation energy that can be easily absorbed. In the Demon Realm these particular lustful folks come from, they often use them as casino chips. But they’re cursed from their exposure to the Demon Realm, and cause a myriad of problems for non Demon cultivators. So initially they were prohibited, but that caused problems for the casinos, which lacked a token that was valued by their patrons, and the dual cultivators, who wanted them to enhance their gains while they were here in the city.

"Remove the curses from all the Tokens? But they’d just get cursed again if the demons took them home." One of the analysts complains.

"Plus it takes so long and uses so much energy to scrub the curse free from them at the portal. Totally infeasible."

I let them go on for a long while before I put in my own suggestion. "Why not use Tokens made here, where there is no curse applied? Originally, every gaming city in this world had their own chips, only good in the city. There’s no reason the casino chips you’re using here can’t be locally made instead of imported."

That leads to a whole other discussion on exchange ratios for visitors returning home and energy conversion that is mind numbing level boring, and everyone in the room is visibly glad wwhen the staff brings in lunch.