The Balrog Lord's Daily Life
"Ahahahaha! A bunch of weaklings like you dare challenge me, the mighty Raglios, the Balrog Lord? You're courting death!" Xiao Yu roared with laughter as he swung the Hammer of the Balrog, blasting fireballs the size of locomotive engines into the adventuring party before him.
"Dodge! Move!"
"Oh no, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, ah!"
Screams rang out without end, but the adventuring party before him proved unusually tenacious. Though they had suffered heavy casualties, they continued to fight, but their defeat was only a matter of time.
Xiao Yu looked down at the adventurers below, thinking smugly to himself. He was a level 60 Balrog Lord, a three-skull-rank major boss. In the three months since he had established himself in Blazing Flame Canyon, at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, adventurers had died at his hands. Yet these people, who couldn't even put together a full set of fire-resistance gear, were too stingy to drink fire-resistance potions, and wouldn't even use a magic scroll, dared to come and make trouble on his turf. They really didn't know the meaning of death. And he hadn't even used his full strength yet. The battle had lasted half an hour, but they had only managed to knock a third off his whopping eight million HP.
Still, you've done pretty well. For a bunch of weaklings to push me into phase two, you can at least say your deaths were worth it, Xiao Yu thought to himself. But this is as far as you go. I took down more than ten of you in phase one alone, so you really don't stand a chance in phase two. Well, I might as well send you on your way. With that, Xiao Yu decided to stop holding back.
Raglios, the Balrog Lord: "Foolish mortals, tremble before the power of the ancients!" As Xiao Yu recited the edgy line he had written for himself, he unlocked his new phase-two skill.
"Flame Storm!" Flames swept outward from him in all directions like a tide, each wave claiming several lives. Three casts of Flame Storm wiped out the struggling adventuring party in the blink of an eye. Not one survived.
Looking at the equipment, potions, and items scattered across the ground, Xiao Yu smiled in satisfaction. That was quite a haul. Most of the stuff on the ground probably isn't decent high-level equipment, but there's so much of it that it should sell for at least tens of thousands. As he thought this, he used the system command to pick everything up. With a flash of white light, the equipment on the ground was swept away and deposited in Xiao Yu's system warehouse. He then looked at the packed warehouse and nodded with satisfaction.
A message suddenly appeared in the chat window.
Mephistopheles, the Ancient Black Dragon: "Hey, Balrog, how's the fight going? Have you been taken down yet?"
It's my old neighbor, Xiao Yu thought. Mephistopheles, the Ancient Black Dragon, and he were both three-skull-rank major bosses, and the two had split the territory of Blazing Flame Canyon evenly between them. Xiao Yu had established the Blazing Flame Temple dungeon in the west of the canyon, while Mephistopheles had established the Black Dragon Abyss dungeon in the abyss to the east. When they had nothing to do, the two often chatted to pass the time and exchange tips on harvesting adventurers.
Raglios, the Balrog Lord: "Taking me down isn't that easy. The attackers have been wiped out. Hehe, I made another ten thousand and change. How about you?"
Mephistopheles, the Ancient Black Dragon: "I finished ages ago. That bunch were just a pack of weaklings. They got wiped out before they could even beat my dragonkin wizards. Too bad they didn't drop much valuable equipment. I'd be lucky to sell it for two or three thousand."
Raglios, the Balrog Lord: "Be satisfied. Two or three thousand a day is nearly a hundred thousand a month. All right, it's getting late. I need to go eat lunch."
Mephistopheles, the Ancient Black Dragon: "Go ahead. I ordered takeout, but it'll be a while before it gets here."
Raglios, the Balrog Lord: "All right, I'm off, then." After saying goodbye, Xiao Yu logged out of the game.
Xiao Yu climbed out of the gaming pod and started eating lunch, glad once again that he had made the right choice in picking this game.
The game Xiao Yu played was called Sky World. Unlike the old, formulaic games where players could only play adventurers, kill monsters, level up, and do quests, Sky World let players take on any role in the game. From the lowest-level monsters, such as zombies, skeletons, wild dogs, and goblins, to the citizens, merchants, guards, and soldiers in cities, even the lords of the major cities and the bosses of the major monster factions-players could be any of them if they wanted.
Of course, playing different roles came at different costs. Unlike older games that charged by playtime, sold items, or simply charged for both, Sky World had a relatively unusual payment model: it was a so-called template-based game. Players were charged different rates depending on their templates. There were three tiers and dozens of categories of character templates available to players, allowing different types of players to choose different templates.
The cheapest were the free beginner templates, including monster, guard, civilian, and summoned creature templates, among others. These templates didn't cost a cent, but playing them was relatively difficult. With the monster template, for example, players had to play traditional monsters found in the wild, such as skeletons, beasts, goblins, bandits, and the like. Their starting combat power was very weak, and they not only had to fight adventurers but also came into conflict with one another. Their death rate was astonishing, but because the template was free, plenty of people still played it. The civilian template, on the other hand, offered no combat power at all, but its immunity from combat made it a favorite among sightseeing and travel enthusiasts.
The second category was the adventurer template, which required a small payment for a monthly pass. It was much like playing a character in a traditional game: players could kill monsters to level up, do quests, and resurrect after dying.
The third category was the most expensive: VIP templates. These included the boss template, which could command monster factions; the hero template, which could unlock hero quests; and the lord template, which could rule a city. These templates were essentially intended for wealthy players, with prices routinely reaching tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to millions.
Xiao Yu was currently playing a boss template. Of course, he hadn't bought his Balrog Lord character. As a professional gamer who made his living playing games, it would have been highly impractical for him to spend millions on an account with a boss-template character. In fact, he had leveled his Balrog Lord up bit by bit from a lowly flame sprite, spending more than three years and investing untold amounts of effort and money along the way. When a monster-template character died, they could only be resurrected with premium currency, and the higher their level, the more resurrection cost. But it had all been worth it. Now he had finally reached harvest season. As the main boss guarding Blazing Flame Canyon, he had harvested more than a dozen adventuring parties in just one month. Each party's destruction could bring him an income of thousands or even tens of thousands, and over three months he had already earned several hundred thousand RMB.
This is a fucking money tree! Hahahaha, this feels amazing! I've made over three hundred thousand in just three months. If I can keep this up for three to five years, make a few million, buy a house and a car, reach the pinnacle of life, and marry a beautiful, fair-skinned heiress, none of that will be a problem!
The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. Even the instant meal he had heated in the microwave seemed to taste a little better.
Beep, beep, beep. An alarm interrupted Xiao Yu's daydreaming. He looked and saw that it was a game notification from his gaming pod. Presumably, another adventuring party had come to challenge the dungeon. Xiao Yu stretched. It looked like he would be working overtime again today.