Chapter 011: Aesthetic Standards

After a fierce internal debate, Wang Bo did not refuse Gremory's proposal.

He signed a contract with Lady Gremory.

From then on, Lady Gremory would not refuse Wang Bo's summons and would even be willing to help him when necessary; he could command the thirty-two demon legions under her rule as he pleased.

It sounded wonderful.

However, there were numerous restrictions.

First, summoning demons to the human world required mana. With Wang Bo's current mana, summoning a demon army of a thousand was no problem.

But according to the Key of Solomon, a demon legion consisted of approximately six thousand six hundred and sixty-six demons.

Even if Wang Bo exhausted all his mana, he could not summon six thousand six hundred and sixty-six demons at once.

His limit was about two thousand demons.

And that number couldn't even make up a single demon legion.

Even if all thirty-two legions under Lady Gremory obeyed Wang Bo's orders, he couldn't summon them all to the human world at once.

Second, even if Wang Bo summoned demons to the human world, he had to pay them to follow his orders.

That was stipulated in the contract.

If Wang Bo wanted to command the demon legions, he had to pay.

For demons themselves, souls were the best hard currency.

Of course, although Wang Bo was a wizard, he wasn't of an evil alignment. He wouldn't sell the souls of heroes or saints to Gremory, but if it were the soul of an emperor or a butcher, Wang Bo wouldn't hesitate to sell those people's souls to demons.

After all, tyrants were not rare throughout history.

And besides historical tyrants, there were also many tyrants in other worlds.

Among them, the most famous was probably Sauron from the world of The Lord of the Rings.

Wang Bo believed that if he could capture that guy and sell him to Gremory, Lady Gremory would be overjoyed. She might even offer herself to him.

Of course, that possibility was slim.

Apart from that, there was also the evil dragon Smaug. His soul would definitely be a collector's item for demons.

And the White Witch, who ruled the world of Narnia for who knows how many years, causing countless people to suffer. If Wang Bo could obtain her soul, Lady Gremory would certainly not be stingy.

Just then, Wang Bo suddenly thought of someone.

The former leader of the Cross organization, Sloan!

This guy had killed countless people; the number of deaths caused by him was unknown, and those he had personally killed were astonishing. After all, he had climbed up from the bottom step by step after joining the organization.

Wang Bo could be sure that the number of people who died at his hands exceeded three digits.

No matter how you looked at it, he could be considered a butcher.

Wang Bo hadn't wanted to kill people back then, so he had sealed their brains and turned them into vegetables. Now, it seemed he could make use of the waste.

So that night, Wang Bo took Lady Gremory to St. Peter's Hospital. Wang Bo remembered that after Sloan and his group were discovered, they had been placed in the wards of this hospital.

The man and the demon passed through the guards as if no one was there and entered the mixed-gender ward.

A group of killers lay quietly in bed, seemingly asleep.

Pointing at Sloan lying on the hospital bed, Wang Bo said to Lady Gremory, "What do you think of this man's soul? How much can it sell for?"

Lady Gremory smiled slightly and said, "In hell, such a soul is worth a hundred demons."

To be honest, in hell, demons were really not worth much, because there were too many demons in hell, especially those living in the lowest layers. Countless low-level demons died and were born every day.

Perhaps in human eyes, demons were powerful, mysterious, and incredible.

But that was only from a human perspective.

In Lady Gremory's view, a special human soul was far more valuable than a demon.

This fully illustrated one thing.

Scarcity increases value.

Hearing that a single Sloan was worth a hundred demons, Wang Bo nodded without hesitation and said, "Sold."

Gremory smiled slightly. Raising her hand, she pulled Sloan's soul out of his body, rolled it into a ball, and sent it into an unknown space.

Wang Bo was not surprised. For a demon like Lady Gremory, manipulating space was nothing new.

Wang Bo pointed at another fat man and said, "How much can this one sell for?"

"Fifty." Lady Gremory lowered the price.

"Sold." Wang Bo said cheerfully. Every one of these killers had a reason to go to hell, because they had stained their hands with too much innocent blood.

Since he could make use of the waste, Wang Bo naturally wouldn't feel sorry.

After making a round, Wang Bo sold all the killers' souls to Gremory.

Of course, only the high-ranking members of the organization, because Gremory didn't fancy the low-level killers.

In total, Wang Bo obtained over four hundred demons.

Lady Gremory didn't have that many demons on hand at the moment, so she signed a contract with Wang Bo. After she returned to hell, she would gather over four hundred demons and send them to Wang Bo.

Wang Bo agreed readily.

His transaction with Lady Gremory had just begun. He believed that Lady Gremory would not be so shortsighted as to default on a debt. After all, she was a duke and had some face to maintain.

"But let me make one thing clear first, Lady Gremory," Wang Bo said. "The demons you give me must not be too disgusting. At least they should conform to human aesthetic standards. Is that okay?"

Through the Key of Solomon, Wang Bo knew that there were many types of demons.

Some demons were quite pleasing to human aesthetics, such as nightmares or succubi.

But some demons were simply anti-human, like imps, or for that matter, mariliths, as well as minotaurs, goat-headed demons, and scythe demons.

Of course, there were also purely monstrous demons, like balrogs, giant demons, and female demons.

Anyway, the records in the Key of Solomon opened Wang Bo's eyes.

So there were that many kinds of demons.

So to avoid being disgusted, Wang Bo made it clear to Lady Gremory in advance that he only wanted demons that conformed to human aesthetic standards.

Otherwise, if Lady Gremory gave him some bugs covered in eyes, winged monkeys, or one-eyed beholders, he wouldn't know whether to accept them or not.

If he accepted them, keeping these disgusting things by his side would be pure torture.

But if he didn't accept them, Lady Gremory might not take them back.

So Wang Bo intended to make things clear from the start to avoid trouble later.

Lady Gremory nodded, taking note of the matter. For her, such a thing was just a command and not troublesome.

After all, it wasn't her personally collecting the demons.