One of Charles's purposes for coming to the demon settlement had been fulfilled, but he still had another matter to attend to.
Charles needed to buy some materials. Gathering them on this plane was clearly rather difficult, so he could only purchase them.
After staying in his room for two days and thoroughly absorbing the Balor's demon bloodline, Charles took Bruce out with him.
There were shops in the settlement, and quite a few of them.
Less than half of the shop owners were native demons; the rest were fallen members of other races.
Clearly, compared with true demons, they had a better head for business.
Most true demons preferred simpler, more brutal methods, such as killing demons and plundering their goods.
None of the materials Charles needed were native to the Abyss. He had brought some from the Wizard World, but the things he could carry through the fallen ritual were limited. They certainly would not be enough, so he could only buy the rest locally.
Just as materials from the Abyss were relatively expensive in the Wizard World and other planar worlds,
materials from other planes were equally expensive here.
Expense was one issue; the other was that the materials were hard to find.
Charles visited several shops in succession before gradually buying some suitable materials.
When he pushed open the door to another shop in the settlement's core district, the demon who appeared before him this time made his eyes light up.
The owner was a Yugoloth.
Yugoloths were a special kind of fiend, the race most skilled at trade among fiends.
This fiendish race was spread throughout the Lower Planes, usually running shops or merchant caravans.
They did not merely appear in the Abyss. They were even more widely distributed in the Nine Hells, the Bottomless