A few hours later.

“Wuuu… wuuu…”

The little demon woke up hungry.

Not smelling any familiar scents, the little demon looked left and right. No one was around. His empty little tummy felt uncomfortable.

He whimpered a few times, his own cries the only sound in the empty palace. The little one’s lip trembled, feeling increasingly wronged, until finally, he let out a loud wail.

“Waaaaah~~~”

The demons, who were busy cleaning other parts of the underground palace, heard the cub’s cries and rushed back frantically. Who knew how long this underground palace had existed?

It was dilapidated and filthy. Plus, their previous unrestrained fights had rendered the palace structurally unsound.

Now that they had a cub to raise, they naturally needed to tidy up the place, make it at least resemble a home.

So, the four demons, as usual after another inconclusive brawl, had seen the little one sleeping soundly and quietly gone off to several other relatively intact side halls to clean, disable dangerous traps, clear out skeletons and poisonous substances.

They weren’t even finished when they heard the cub crying.

When they ran back, the heartbroken cub immediately reached out his hands towards the familiar demons, looking utterly wronged.

Bazel, thanks to his position, successfully snatched up the cub first. Once held, the little one buried his head in Bazel’s chest, clutching his clothes and crying his eyes out.

Bazel supported the cub’s bottom with one hand and gently patted his back with the other. A small, miserable tail wrapped itself around the wrist of the hand supporting him.

Who could possibly resist this? Bazel felt like the cub’s cries were twisting his heart into knots.

“What happened?” Nick asked.

The cub was crying so hard his little wings were trembling with the effort. Did something happen while they were gone?

“Let me see! Let me see!” Bode, being a round slime, was much shorter than the other demons and couldn’t see the cub at all, reduced to bouncing frantically on the ground.

Lance stood nearby, frowning, guessing maybe the bed was too hard and uncomfortable for the cub. That soft, large bed had been burned by Bazel; otherwise, the cub would surely have slept comfortably there.

The four demons completely failed to realize the just-awakened cub was hungry. After all, they could go for days after a single meal; Bazel could even go months without eating if he was full.

While hiding out, they had always lived a feast-or-famine existence. For a moment, they utterly forgot that a cub was different from rough, grown-up demons like themselves.

After being comforted for a while, the little one finally stopped crying. Sniffling, he rubbed his cheek against Bazel’s chest. When that didn’t seem to help, the very hungry little demon miserably started sucking on the tip of his own tail.

Watching the little one’s actions, Lance suddenly realized, “Is he hungry?”

The other three demons: !!!

Right, cubs need to eat!

But there was nothing in the underground palace right now. They immediately looked towards Nick, since he was usually the one who procured food from outside, storing it all in his shadow.

Nick: “All I have in my shadow is the hind leg of a demonic beast we killed a few days ago. The cub doesn’t have teeth, he definitely can’t eat that. A cub this small should be drinking milk.”

Three male demons plus one genderless slime fell silent.

Seeing the cub with reddened eyes, long lashes damp with tears, pitifully sucking on his tail tip, Nick turned around. “I’ll go catch a female demonic beast.”

Lance went with him. He remembered several types of demonic beast milk suitable for feeding little demons, high in nutrition too. Plus, his abilities allowed him to capture beasts unharmed.

After they left, Bazel continued holding the cub.

Bode looked on with burning envy, but the stingy fat dragon absolutely refused to let him hold the cub, spouting excuses like “You’re too short, you’ll drop him,” “Where are your hands? I can’t even see them,” and “You don’t have legs, your balance is bad.”

The slime was so furious he nearly exploded.

Bode, once the strongest Greater Demon of the slime clan, possessed an innate talent besides his corrosive abilities. Glaring at the punchable fat dragon, he began to swell, growing larger and larger, from a knee-high blob to nearly the height of the palace ceiling. Two enormous beady eyes stared fiercely at the fat dragon.

It seemed Bode was truly enraged.

Bazel immediately yelled, “I apologize! Let’s not fight now! I’m holding the cub! What if he gets hurt or the palace collapses?”

Upon hearing the cub might get hurt, the fierce beady eyes instantly became incredibly clear. Bode thought about it and realized it was true. Cubs were very fragile. Bazel could be beaten up anytime, but the cub couldn’t get injured.

So, the giant slime began to shrink, eventually becoming fist-sized—referring to the cub’s fist, of course.

Since he couldn’t hold the cub, maybe the cub could hold him~

A slime’s weight changed with its size. Now that he was so small, there was no worry of crushing the cub. The mini-slime leaped forcefully from the ground straight into the cub’s arms.

Indeed, the cub’s embrace was comfortable, warm and cozy. And seeing the cub up close was even cuter! His anger immediately dissipated, his beady eyes turning into heart shapes.

The little demon noticed something suddenly appear in his arms. Blinking curiously, he stared at the blue jelly blob, even forgetting to suck on his tail. He reached out a tiny finger and poked the slime. The cool slime immediately wobbled happily a few times.

“Ah ah ah.”

The little demon was happy too, his slightly red eyes curving into crescents. While ‘ah-ah’-ing and drooling, the next second, with lightning speed that caught everyone off guard, he grabbed the slime and stuffed it into his mouth.

Bode: ?!!

Luckily, Bazel reacted quickly, pulling the not-yet-eaten mini-slime out of the cub’s mouth and tossing him far away with a swoosh. “You can’t eat this, it’s dirty.”

Bode rolled around everywhere all day and never seemed to bathe; he was probably covered in layers of old dust. How filthy! Eating him would definitely cause diarrhea.

His delicious-looking “jelly” snatched away, the little demon pouted, looking at Bazel with teary, poached-egg eyes.

Bazel, having few scruples to begin with and absolutely no principles when it came to the cub, couldn’t stand that look.

He patted the cub’s head soothingly. “Just wait a little longer, Nick and the others will be back with food soon. But if you’re really that hungry, we’ll have to wash Bode first before you eat him. Slimes can regenerate quickly even if a piece is missing, though I don’t know if he tastes any good.”

The rejected Bode lay despondently in the distance, still smeared with the cub’s drool. Overcome with sadness, the round slime seemed to deflate like a leaky balloon, becoming flatter and flatter, his color even fading.

By the time Nick and Lance returned, Bazel was already contemplating whether to mince the slime into paste for the cub or just cut him into strips and boil them.

Nick almost stepped on Bode. Seeing the small, flat, pale blue slime on the ground, he jumped back startled. “What happened to him?”

Bazel hurried over. “Never mind him, he’s just sulking. Did you bring the female beast? The cub is starving; he almost devoured Bode raw just now.”

Nick didn’t understand why anyone would eat a slime, but those were minor details. The top priority now was getting the cub some milk.

He pulled a demonic beast out of his shadow—surprisingly, it was a nursing, white Hellhound. This type of beast was rare and powerful, especially nursing females; when angered, even high-ranking demons were no match.

Bazel didn’t care what kind of beast it was: “Great, the cub can have milk… What are these things now?”

Seeing Nick pull three more small white things from his shadow, Bazel looked utterly disgusted.

Lance, while using his powers to wake the sleeping Hellhound, answered, “They’re this Hellhound’s pups. They can be playmates for the cub. Didn’t many nobles used to keep Hellhounds as pets? Our little one is the Demon King’s son, of course he needs pets too. So we brought them all back.”

As soon as the female Hellhound woke up, she immediately attacked the demons viciously. However, the demons present were stronger than her.

Just releasing a bit of their aura made the Hellhound hesitate, not daring to attack again. When the three pups were also awakened, the female Hellhound quickly gathered her children and retreated to a corner.

The three clueless pups didn’t understand the tense atmosphere and were already snuggled up to their mother, drinking milk. The demons were still trying to figure out how exactly to feed the cub.

Lance twirled a strand of hair around his finger. “I don’t think we should coddle the cub too much. Besides, the little guy is a boy. Let him go directly to the Hellhound to drink. That way, when he’s hungry, he’ll know to find the Hellhound himself.”

Bazel also remembered starting to hunt alone right after he was born. Coddling a cub wasn’t good. “But our little one has no aggression at all. What if the Hellhound attacks him when he goes over?”

Nick chuckled. “That’s simple. If it dares to attack the cub, we kill it and find a more docile one. Hellhounds might be rare, but the Forest of Calamity is full of demonic beasts. There’s bound to be one sensible enough.”

The nursing female Hellhound, whether she understood their words or sensed the killing intent, kept her head low, huddled in the corner, afraid to move.

When they brought the cub over to the Hellhound, the little one watched the three pups drinking milk and seemed to understand something. He immediately crawled forward and squeezed in. The female Hellhound indeed didn’t attack the cub, lying there quietly, watching her children feed.

Just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief, something unexpected happened.

The female Hellhound didn’t move, but the three nursing pups were unwilling to share. They used their heads to butt the cub out of the dinner line.

The ejected cub looked completely baffled. Watching the three white pups enthusiastically drinking milk, he immediately ‘ah-ah’-ed and charged back in, only to be shoved and kicked out again by the pups, several faint red paw prints now marking his forehead.

He looked tearfully towards the demons.

Nick stared coldly at the entire Hellhound family: “Let’s just kill them all, big and small. I’ll go find new ones.”

Bazel didn’t like the look of those three Hellhound pups at all: “Kill the small ones! How dare they steal the cub’s food.”

In the end, it was Lance who insisted on keeping both mother and pups. Leaving aside the fact that the cub was already very hungry and might not last until they found another nursing beast, just killing the pups would undoubtedly drive the female Hellhound mad.

She might even seek revenge later. It wouldn’t matter to them, but the cub was so fragile; he definitely couldn’t withstand an attack from a Hellhound.

Moreover, Lance had another consideration. The cub was weak, weaker than most cubs he had seen. Although they would always protect him, there would inevitably be times they couldn’t watch him every second.

Letting the cub grow up with these three Hellhounds meant that once the Hellhounds bonded with him, they would protect him constantly. Three demonic beasts with the potential strength of high-ranking demons could handle most situations.

The cub, who couldn’t even beat the puppies, finally managed to drink some milk. The demons assigned this task to the sulking Bode. The flattened slime immediately perked up, took a bowl, went to the Hellhound to squeeze some milk, and then fed it to the cub with a small spoon.

The little demon was starving and ate eagerly. The moment one spoonful was gone, he immediately opened his mouth wide, the very picture of a baby bird waiting to be fed.

Bode, the feeder, was overjoyed, bobbing his head contentedly and humming a tune. He gazed at the cub with utter adoration, wishing he could feed him like this forever.

Even as an egg, the cub could absorb vast amounts of demonic power. It was the same now with milk. He drank several bowls in a row before stopping—truly a little guy with a big appetite.

Full to bursting, the little demon’s belly bulged. He let out a little milky burp, happily wiggling his feet and flashing a sweet smile at Bode.