I would say stopping the Fool and allowing the rituals to continue, multiplied, was peak monstrosity. Evil Clown knew the Fool had a good cause and that Blight was immoral, without knowing the full details.

I’ve been arguing with myself over this also. The reasoning I’ve come to us this:
Most people are actually just idiots in this world because all of the truly hard parts of learning/growing are automatically and freely given to them through the classes. Also the reason the demons might not be excessively high level is because they keep getting killed. Neirs reached his level because he can level without usually putting his life in danger unlike a warrior. And the reason many other classes that could do the same don’t reach the same high levels is because they don’t challenge themselves / earn experience often enough.

I feel its clear this king is incredibly incompetent, probably a reason why not yet revealed, at least compared to the other kings shown so far in the novel even when compared to any general or lady or Lord.

Putting down this excellent chapter just because you loathe horror elements is not doing justice for Tom?

A couple of things, there’s clearly something supernatural about the “red classes” so there’s a chunk of unknown info for example how he knew the princess was behind him, all of the solders were at the wall (at least the good ones), and while there might be high level people in the demon army we know random death still has it’s place on the battlefield, for demons who are a new race and don’t have the same magic item stores to help counter chance death even their heros can die to an arrow

Yes, on the mages face

Couple of points: not sure if there was an author edit after this comment, but the first summoning cost 10,000 unborn souls, all for the 60 Earthers that appeared in that group. The Fool implied the King wants to do it again, and much larger the next time.

Point 2: Earth almost certainly has a much, much greater total population compared to Innworld. Based on the sizes given for some of the largest cities in Innworld, there is probably less than 1 billion inhabitants, compared to 8 billion on Earth. That means the sacrifice to bring Earthers over is way more costly in comparison.

Point 3: I highly, highly doubt the Blighted King asked his people if it was okay to kill 10,000 of their babies. They might be super patriotic, but I doubt they would be okay with that. I am guessing very, very few people know what the cost of the ritual was.

I would think Erin, and possibly a few others that were the very first to appear, were likely the result of testing the spell prior to the big summoning.

But it is pretty easy to tell that the ritual isn’t wholly the cause of bringing Earthers to Innworld. If it was, you wouldn’t have people appearing at various times, even long after the ritual finished.

‘Tearing the veil between worlds’ is a good way to put it: we know that the fae, at the very least, can move between worlds, including Innworld and Earth. That means there has to be some sort of connection. If the ritual basically poked a hole in that connection, but never fully healed/closed that hole, then it makes sense people would still be transferring over. The hole could be somewhat smaller, which is why we don’t see large groups appearing after the ritual occurred – the large groups transported over when the hole was widest, during the ritual, but can still come over in ones and twos afterwards, because the hole is still there.

That makes what the Fool said even scarier, since if they do the ritual again but even larger, that hole is just going to get even bigger. We’d probably start seeing groups of 3-5 people popping up in the world at random, afterwards, and just continue to do so. On top of that, usually a tear like that makes whatever material it is in more susceptible to further damage. Right now, only the Blighted King knows how to use the ritual, but if the fabric of the world gets weaker, other things can likely take advantage of that.