Chapter 285 - 228: How Many Steps to Whitewash Devils

Chapter 285: Chapter 228: How Many Steps to Whitewash Devils

Zog wasn’t surprised by Asmodis’s idea.

If the Devils wanted to establish diplomatic relations with the Main Plane, it was only natural they’d want to set up trade with the various Kingdoms, not just the Church.

A good reputation would be very useful in a situation like that.

While profit was always the top priority in trade, reputation and word-of-mouth were still a close second.

The Devils’ current reputation couldn’t be called "good," so much as "irredeemable."

After all, no matter how tempting the profits, it was hard to do business when you had a reputation for always betraying clients, peppering Contracts with hidden pitfalls, and occasionally kidnapping customers to Hell to become slaves—the so-called "selling one’s soul."

"Selling your soul," in the way Devils meant it, was a truly terrifying affair.

Perhaps due to differences in the rules between planes, it was very difficult for a Devil to die on the Main Plane. When dealt a fatal blow, they would usually just dissolve into a pool of pus and return to Hell. Only in Hell itself could they be killed easily.

Likewise, Humans taken to Hell as slaves also found it difficult to die. Their lifespans would even lengthen. What was worse, they lacked the Devil’s talent for returning to their home plane upon suffering a mortal wound. They couldn’t live well, yet they couldn’t die either, leading to even longer torment.

"I’d say you Devils have a decent enough image. You have plenty of worshipers on the Feilin Continent, don’t you?" Zog said teasingly.

This wasn’t an entirely baseless claim. After Hell lost its Demigod Level figures and the main portal was sealed, the number of Devil worshipers had dropped significantly, but they hadn’t vanished completely.

But none of them were ever anyone of consequence. They were just desperate, greedy fools who had run out of options and weren’t too bright in the first place—the kind who would turn to Devils for power.

The fates of these worshipers were also quite similar: they were now serving as manual laborers in Hell, doing jobs that even Inferior Demons were too inept for and that proper Devils disdained.

That was why Zog had found it so strange when he learned the Mammon Sect was behind the Magic Vision Device source-switching incident. The pool of Devil followers on the Continent had long since been exhausted; where could they have found that kind of power?

"Ha ha," Asmodis forced a laugh. "A very funny deadpan joke. You know exactly what kind of people follow Devils on the Continent these days."

He started counting on his fingers. "Gamblers deep in debt, lunatics who’ve fried their brains on psychedelic mushrooms, and those talentless hacks who insist they’re geniuses. They think anyone who doesn’t appreciate them is blind or an enemy, and they feel... uh..."

"An unappreciated genius?"

"An unappreciated genius! Wow, that’s exactly it! They’re just psychos who want to get revenge on society for it. What good are followers like that?! What do they think Hell is, a prison?"

Asmodis’s disgust for these Devil worshipers was palpable.

In his opinion, those people were genuinely unhinged. Devils themselves had no use for bloody, disgusting rituals; they were a pragmatic race. They’d rather spend time planting another row of crops than designing some bizarre ceremony.

The increasingly depraved rituals were all concocted by the worshipers themselves.

They weren’t exactly normal to begin with. On top of that, the "Great Hell Tyrant" rarely ever responded to them. The real reason for the silence was that the Church had cut off the primary channels of communication, but the worshipers blamed it on their own insufficient piety, believing their rituals had failed to properly amuse the Tyrant.

Thus, with a great deal of misguided initiative, they kept iterating on the rituals, making them more and more insane.

And they ruined the Devils’ reputation in the process.

"So, how do you plan to change the Devils’ image?" Zog asked.

Asmodis looked confused. ’Isn’t figuring that out supposed to be Zog’s job?’ he thought. Still, he answered, "Just like how you changed the image of the goblins, Beastmen, and Zor. Aren’t those races now able to appear openly in Human cities across the Continent?"

"No, you’re not quite the same."

"How are we any different? I’ve seen the reports about that... that *Feilin’s Best Songs* show. A Spider Elf—a *Spider Elf*, for crying out loud!—is a mentor on it, coaching an Elf! The mentor’s chair for her giant spider-ass has to be two sizes bigger than everyone else’s."

Asmodis felt that improving the Devils’ image had to be easier than getting a Zor and an Elf in the same frame without them trying to kill each other.

"I didn’t change the goblins. The goblins were probably just a bunch of misunderstood schmucks, or maybe they just never had a chance to show their talents. As for the other two, their basic nature is fine. They were only hostile to other races because of conflicts over resources. Once those conflicts were resolved, their relationships naturally improved."

The implication in Zog’s words was that the fundamental nature of Devils was rotten—or at least, the nature of most of them was.

Perhaps the severe lack of resources for survival had forced every Devil to develop an extremely selfish personality. They couldn’t have survived otherwise.

Harsh lands breed cunning devils.

It was a twisted sort of logic, but it was also an intuitive summary of the Devil race.

"We have resource conflicts too! Devils are just a little more warlike, violent, and insidious, that’s all. Beastmen are warlike too! Okay, fine, Beastmen are a bit more honorable than we are. But the Zor have no honor, and they aren’t as violent..."

Asmodis’s confidence faltered as he spoke.

Looked at that way, it seemed Devils were fated to be hated and hunted by all.

"What if I get a whole group to go on a show? Like, a troupe of Desire Demons, singing and dancing. They’re definitely less inhibited than Humans, and they have unique features. Take that maid of yours—she’s got white hair, completely white. I hear some people are really into white hair."

Asmodis proposed his idea.

If they could create a few Devil Big Stars, their fans’ impression of Devils would surely improve. After the show, they could film a little Shadow of Evil movie, and maybe hordes of Humans would start coming to Hell as tourists.