The Duke looked into the box in horror, dropping it into the ground out of disgust. His Spirit, shaped as a glorious golden-colored chicken cried angrily a the soldier, while using its large claws to kick away the box from the Duke's presence…
This was the Duke's Spirit, the Golden Cockatrice King.
Although it seemed impressive and was almost three-meters-tall, with a great amount of physical strength and innate abilities and magic, it wasn't the strongest spirit out there, nor the Duke had been enhancing his level or spirit orb past a certain point where he hit a progression wall and stopped caring about such things as he had to put his time into taking care of his duchy first.
The angered cockatrice almost attacked the soldier, it had a strong and prideful personality, and hated it when someone tried to play a prank on his master.
"W-Who did this?!" roared the duke.
"D-Duke, I don't know! One of the hunters?! I swear that it wasn't me!" cried the soldier, kneeling before the Duke.
The soldier wasn't some random man, it was one of the soldiers that has been working for the Duke for almost 7 years now, and he had interacted a lot with him, and even his two little girls seemed fond of him and his gentle personality and correctness…
"Sigh… W-Why would they send me the frozen head of a demon? Do they want me to chop their heads off this badly?!" asked the Duke. He sat down again in the chair as the soldier suddenly noticed a strange note in the floor.
"I-I don't know, Duke… But it seems that there was a note in the box, look." Said the soldier, giving the Duke a paper note with some wonderful handwriting on it.
The Duke began reading it out loud, as his face grew progressively more angered, and his eyebrows started furrowing.
"Dear Duke of Goldsand, I am an anonymous hunter from this village of humble farmers and hunters. Yesterday's hunt was filled with dangers you can't even imagine, we encountered over three different groups of demons before even reaching a Wild Boar, and the last group had a high-ranking Demon, a Blue-skinned Oni, whose meat I have offered to you for you to enjoy…"
"Blue-skinned Demons are said to be high-Ranking's demons that can even end an entire village if they grow strong enough over time. These demons only appear in specific areas where there are Demon Gates, meaning that this village's forest is being most likely infected with demons non-stop… Sadly, this also means that the lives of these people are being threatened.
As this continues to happen, the forest will continue growing more dangerous, and your precious Wild Boars are nearing total extinction in the area."
"Even if you don't care about us and let us all die hopelessly, the demons won't be satisfied with that. They're vicious, malicious entities that are not even original from this world. They will continue their march relentlessly, devouring all things they could find, and eventually, they will find your duchy and invade it, destroying anything you've ever loved.
I have sent this head to you so you could ask an expert of its authenticity. I request your help and cooperation in helping us fight against the Demons before they destroy our village, and then decide to destroy the rest of the Duchy. We are still in early stages… It can still be stopped… It all depends in your goodwill. Sincerely, an anonymous hunter…"
The duke's face slowly moved from being angered to being filled with contempt and concern. He looked once more into the frozen head of the blue-skinned Oni, as his face progressively grew more and more concerned, as if he had been awakened of something.
The impactful gift ended doing just what Blake wanted, it generated an impression, even if negative, it would still work as a warning. However, if the Duke were to help or not… it all depended on his goodwill at the end, just as he had written down in the paper.
"Lord, is there something you think about this letter?" wondered the soldier. "I think… Even if this was very disrespectful… We should help. This is not just a problem from the village alone, if the demons truly end up destroying the village and then move on… they might also target more villages but eventually they'll come directly to the duchy.
I agree with the hunter in some things… Demons are not truly like monsters, they're malicious and more cunning than even goblins, and also more organized as well! If we let them grow… The Duchy would end up like the four duchies that were destroyed by the Demon Lord that emerged in the neighbor Kingdom of Silvertide…"
The Kingdom of Silvertide…
Four of its duchies were destroyed by a Demon Lord that evolved from a High-Ranking Demon when the duke where this Demon Gate emerged decided to not care for the villages being destroyed by the demons to save up money and resources, this ended giving the demons enough time to grow to insane levels of strength, to the point they were able to conquer four duchies.
The Kingdom of Silvertide is still in a fight against this vicious Demon Lord until this day, and because they had decided to not invest resources early on when the problem was still on a small scale, now they were investing even more resources just to keep the demons at bay, the Kingdom's economy was slowly crumbling, and it was reaching its greatest crisis so far.
It was a problem that was slowly reaching an international level, if the Demon Lord were to manage to take over the Kingdom's capital, it would continue its march, attempting to conquer other Kingdoms, and the Kingdom of Goldriver was the closest one to the Kingdom of Silvertide.
The Duke realized that if he committed the same mistakes as this Duke, everything would be lost.