"You still live on Hellsreach?" Pef asked as Nellie appeared in the inner world.

His wife glanced at the huge demon with wary eyes, then sat beside Pef and smiled cutely.

"Elf Princess. I sense you're also close to reaching Tier 4." Arazmodel spoke in a booming voice. Then his eyes turned towards Pef. "I rule from Hellsreach. But I live in another system, to keep my family safe."

Pef hummed to himself. Demons were likely to try and sabotage the Archdemon even at the cost of their lives.

Politics in the demon world was literally cut-throat politics.

"I see. We'll arrive in an hour at Hellsreach. Be so kind and grab all the spare adamantite you can find, while Nellie and I explore the place." he asked in a polite tone.

Arazmodel glared at the shameless human for a second. "A few tons is easy. Maybe a thousand tons if I requisition everything...it would be costly." he argued, back to his trader persona.

Pef smiled sweetly. "I can imagine. But I don't want everything. Just what can be bought. Meanwhile, observe."

And with that, he took out a thin slice of Godbeast heart, the violet flesh pulsing strongly with Devouring Dao.

Then he carefully portioned the slice into rice sized cuts, and fed Nellie one of them.

Immediately, his wife rose abruptly in cultivation, again having off a thousand years from her next Ascension. A few more bits followed, and Nellie reached the very peak...her own blue aura spiking like a strobe light.

Pef took out a hundred mind stones and passed them over, watching Nellie rapidly drain the mana from the stones and crossing over into the Tier 4 realm.

He then offered a rice sized portion to the giant Archdemon, while Nellie fell into deep meditation, stabilizing her new cultivation realm.

Arazmodel ate the flesh curious, then began glowing blue, with even stronger lines lighting up on his magic circuits.

"This...a thousand times stronger than that godwine you bartered with me. Some kind of meat from a beast?" the demon wondered out loud.

Pef just stared at him, observing the effects with his coresense, while the glove used even more arcane methods.

'We could push the demon to the peak of Tier 4, using half of the heart. We could also fully convert him to the Legion method, instead of this loyalty bloodline.' the glove argued while computing a few hundred scenarios, going from favorable events to out-right war.

"Diluted, I can brew wine for lower ranks. But in raw state it's a Tier 4 ingredient. It will kill anyone with a low rank. Most Tier 3 would also die." Pef explained with a nod towards his brand-new Tier 4 wife.

"I swear...this bait and hook approach is worthy of the best demons. You can buy a galaxy with a fist sized portion." Arazmodel said in a grave tone.

Pef opened his hand to produce a fist size cut of Godbeast heart. "I could buy it. But I want much more. Outside the gate, there's a whole Great Realm. Billions of universes, higher tier than this one. Strong enemies as well." he offered, holding his palm out.

Arazmodel blinked and eyed the offering with visible worry. "Is this an offer to join your Legion?" the demon asked cautiously.

"No." Pef said curtly.

"No?" the demon asked confused.

"This is yours anyway. I told you, nothing in this universe is worth much. We're only a tiny grain of the lowest quality sand, on a random beach. And the enemy is the sea." Pef told him and flicked the godbest heart towards the Archdemon, in a casual gesture.

Arazmodel cradled the precious meat and stored it somewhere. "So that's why you gave away the Archdemon core. It's worth nothing, after all..."

Pef shook his head. "Value is in the eye of the beholder. It would take me a thousand years to demolish an entire galaxy.

A Veritas Legion powerword gun needs one second to demolish a dozen universes. And it gets much worse, at higher tiers."

The demon sat dawn, mulling over the words with full intent. No doubt his trader skills were helping as well, since every oracle had multiple avenues of manifesting, from percentage calculations to diving fate or seeing the truth.

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"You're trying to create a dam or levee, to shelter some survivors from that sea. And you need durable bricks, not grains of sand, that easily wash away." Arazmodel answered closing his eyes.

"The Legion is that seawall, my friend. But the wall is leaking already. The first Archdemon died because a golith sting bore into his mind, whispering unknowable mysteries and delirious insights, some of them even true. And it came from outside." Pef said in a sad tone, then rose to his feet.

He had arrived in Hellsreach orbit, and stopped at the first station to register.

Somehow, the customs demoness didn't quite believe his claim of being the owner of planet Mi'ridalor. Even with a signed contract.

With a sigh, he dragged Arazmodel outside, and let him sort the visitor papers.

"Archdemon! There was a human just here..." the demoness explained in a fit of sobs and fear.

"Lord Pef has full clearance to visit anywhere, by my command. His Tier 4 elven wife as well. And may Hell have mercy, on those who try to bother him." Arazmodel proclaimed in a glorious voice, daring anyone to oppose him.

The arrogant custom officials trembled and bowed in terror. Some elders even recalled the last time Pef visited, and the capital burned with madness and violet fire.

Hell wasn't known for its mercy anyway.

Pef landed near a large trading house, pushing aside the demons with an invisible wall of force as he approached the market listing. Anything from spaceships, weapons, and cultivation pills, up to houses, moons, planets and whole star systems were up for sale.

Pef marked a dozen places with mana wells, and lazily placed a bit on the closest one. The elf homeworld was not expendable, but he had a few ideas how to generate large amounts of raw mana with planetary scale engineering.

That engineering meant many voidswords and ground clearing, down to the magnetic core.

It took a hundred bids till he managed to obtain a mana world at reasonable price. A desert world with no life by cacti and scorpions.

As he was taking possession of the trade documents, a Greater Demon arrived and loudly started bidding on every adamantite item or mine, out for sale.

Pef smiled and Blinked away, leaving a cloaked divine messenger to follow the demon to his base.

In another large town, Pef entered a silver plated auction house to barter some random treasures in his inventory for adamantite ore or mines.

But just as the auctioneer arrived, holding a storage ring to his chest, a loud explosion followed by clouds of gas and streams of magic fog covered everything, killing weaker demons and forcing the stronger ones to flee or cough their own lungs out.

Pef scratched his cheek as his warded armor covered him. 'The Eyeless, I dare say.' Pef thought inward.

'Marking suspects.' the glove confirmed, placing tracking markers on a dozen or so ordinary looking demons, and a few rich dressed murloks.

Pef split a few more messengers to keep track over all the suspects, then he stepped beside the auctioneer demon and grabbed his adamantite purchase from the corpse.

"Thief! Capture him!" an old demoness yelled, pointing at Pef.

Pef smiled and Blinked himself closer, hand extending to capture the Eyeless plant.

The demoness exploded before he could get her, the demonic core rupturing violently.

"Murder! The human killed her!" another voice exclaimed, this time one of the murlok traders.

Pef grinned and glowed with sword qi, void beams and claws striking all suspects at once.

The accusing murlok tried to break a wooden insignia, possibly to escape but he was too slow. Pef grabbed the murlok and retrieved the escape talisman just as it began to activate.

Pef sheared the murlok's hand and dragged the armless victim in his inner world, holding the talisman in place.

A wormhole appeared, shifting the talisman and the hand, and also Pef, who was now holding the murlok hand as a key.

In a second, the space wavered and closed, Pef vanishing from Hellsreach in an instant.

The next second, the tunnel opened on the other end, depositing Pef in a huge cavern filled with a dozen voidbeasts and their handlers. Demons, murloks, a tauren, even a few humans.

'Jackpot!' Pef exulted as he sprang into action.