Family heirloom, then turned into a demon girl

Chapter 169 Mission: 01-6 Promise
As a "Demon King," Peste naturally had money. A Demon King with the authority to host a game would hardly be short of cash. If all else failed, they could simply pick two communities they disliked and drag them into their game, plundering them as permitted by the rules. However, most Demon Kings possessed a certain reserve of strength and wouldn't simply pick a community off the street.

And Pest wouldn't do that.

She did have some money, the source of which was a deal that allowed her to be summoned: a large community hoped to have a "demon king" appear at the "Fire Dragon Birth Festival," a large festival in the northern district. To this end, they made a deal with a mysterious organization, which led to the summoning of new members from the disbanded "Grimm Fantasy Grimoire Group."

Pest was wealthy, but Nero wasn't about to ask her for money just to participate in this Gift Game. Firstly, the community leader was already recruiting new companions and preparing to attack the festival. Secondly, although Nero had joined the community and agreed to help Pest, he didn't intend to get too deeply involved.

As Pest had said before, the community led by the "Demon King" was a hated villain in the small garden. What Pest was about to do next—an attack on the festival—was also an evil act of villainy. According to Nero's own standards, she was unwilling to assist in this matter.

What tipped the scales in her heart was a piece of news and two promises.

The truth behind the attack is revealed: the client who arranged the secret deal to summon the Demon King is none other than the organizer of the "Fire Dragon Birth Festival," the large community of Salamander, which dominates the lower classes of the northern district. Considered to be declining in recent years, they hope to defeat a Demon King to demonstrate their strength.

It can be said that Pest was the stepping stone they prepared for themselves. This news can be said to completely reverse the "perpetrator" and "victim" in the incident, indicating that Pest was actually just fighting for his own survival.

This leads to the first condition for Nero to join the community [Hamel] - in this incident, Pest cannot actively kill people other than [Salamanda] members, nor can he order others to do similar things.

The second agreement is related to the Gift Game that Nero is now going to participate in.

After leaving the Thousand Eyes branch, Nero walked towards the entrance where she entered the small garden, the red rock wall paved with bricks and stones - under the boundary wall.

The method of successfully joining the Gift Game and achieving the first step of the agreement naturally came to her mind during this process.

In order to participate in the gift game "Flowers of a Thousand Rivers and Lakes", Nero must increase his own and the community's [Hamel]'s popularity and gain recognition from [Thousand Eyes].

And within the small garden, there is only one way to achieve this goal - that is to win the gift game.

The gift game is the highest-level "constitution" in the sandbox, above the rules such as "no killing, no stealing", etc.

Those who can continuously win the gift game can get everything they want.

On the way, Nero also saw some shops or communities holding small-scale gift games, but the content was simple and the rewards were meager. The games held in stores were mostly gambling-like, with winners receiving free goods. The games held in small communities were like school sports events or some breakthrough TV shows, and many of them even offered snacks as prizes to please children.

Winning such a game would naturally not help him build his reputation. Nero wanted to participate in the more fundamentalist game of gifts.

"God's Trial of Man." This is an extension of the original Gift Game's pursuit of perfecting the relationship between humans and the gods, and serves as the prototype for the current Gift Game system in Hakoniwa. Those who overcome the trial are considered "heroes" and naturally gain instant fame.

I think this is also the reason why Pest specifically told Nero that "outside the box garden, there are many subordinate gods from various pantheons who are placed as 'examiners' between mountains, rivers, lakes and seas."

As long as Nero gets enough fame from them, and then enters the Gift Game of Thousand Eyes, he can make his own name known completely—

Beatrice can, through the "mysterious organization" that summoned her, send Nero to the Gift Game held by the "Beast of Six Hundred and Sixty-Six" at all costs and become one of the contestants.

This was the second agreement between the two. To make amends for Nero's return to the Little Garden in search of her grandfather, Pest would help her join this Gift Game, which seemed to be connected to the magic swordsman Sparda and the treasure of the Demon Lord "Beast of Six Hundred and Sixty-Six."

Nero walked out of the door of the small garden, looked up at the vast white land and snow-covered mountains in front of him, and thought about how to deal with the next test.

The source of the problem is mainly the opponent she will face: a subordinate god guarding a snowy mountain, or it can be directly called a "mountain god".

According to the information Nero had gathered, "spiritual power"—a measure of the quality and quantity of a person's gift, or supernatural power—was essentially equated with their influence on the world. For example, the spiritual power of a "mountain spirit" was equal to the mountain it represented, while the spiritual power of the "Pied Piper" was equal to the 130 children it had murdered.

The former is a "spirit" born naturally, and the latter is a "demon" born from human life. The difference between the two spiritual qualities lies in their different sources.

If one wants to be promoted from a "mountain spirit" to a "mountain god", one must obtain the spiritual power from "faith".

A mere mountain god might not sound like a big deal, just a small hill. Nero could certainly bring it down with all his might. But with the spiritual power of "faith," the situation could be completely different.

Of course, the mountains here aren't well-known in the outside world, so naturally, few people believe in them. But this, in turn, means that the spirits of these subordinate gods come from their "main god," and they become gods only after receiving faith from the main god.

To gain as much fame as possible, Nero naturally sought not only to overcome the so-called trials but also to defeat the mountain god head-on. After all, trials varied in difficulty, and the value of defeating a deity was certainly not to be underestimated. For this goal, the other party's spiritual power, divided from the main deity, was naturally a problem.

Nero had no way of predicting the strength of this group.

　Chapter 2 might be a little later

　　
　
(End of this chapter)