Kunkuska Trading Company

The Kunkuska Trading Company is the wealthiest and most powerful trading house in the demon realm, a three-thousand-year-old commercial empire that has survived as the realm's number one firm longer than most Demon Lords have held their thrones. Its staff are demons to a man, its headquarters stands in the neutral golden city of Niflheim, and it serves the Demon Lords and high-ranking demons as a one-stop supplier for every errand and luxury they could want. Its motto — "We can even supply a dragon's horn!" — is only half a boast: at the highest customer tier the company will sell you not the horn but the dragon itself. The one condition is money. Kunkuska is famed throughout the demon realm as a coldly profit-driven outfit that even fellow demons call merciless.

**Introduction — the cave merchant (ch. 11-13)** The company first enters the story through Lapis Lazuli, a flat-faced, expressionless half-succubus in a black business suit who teleports into Dantalion's wretched cave to buy his mined ore. She introduces herself as a rank-5 clerk-demon (the lowest grade) of the Kunkuska Trading Company, assigned to handle the realm's poorest Demon Lord. Through her, the world learns how Kunkuska works: customers are ranked from F to A, and only an A-rank buyer may purchase a dragon; the firm doubles as a bank that lends 'emergency money' at brutal interest; and it keeps multiple mercenary guard corps on retainer to collect from defaulters. Lapis warns Dantalion against borrowing by telling the cautionary tale of the rank-25 Demon Lord Glasya-Labolas, who took a 100,000-gold loan and skipped interest for seventy years — Kunkuska mobilised thirty-six demon legions, stormed his dungeon, and bankrupted him to recover the debt. 'This,' she says, 'is the power of the Kunkuska Trading Company.'

**Dantalion's instrument (ch. 13 onward)** Dantalion turns the firm into the backbone of his rise. Unable to repay a fortune by mining, he instead seeds Kunkuska with the prophecy of the Black Death and the worthless 'black herb' that will cure it, buying the company's trust and overestimation of him as a possible seer. Through Kunkuska he corners markets, launders looted equipment, spreads bribes, and runs an information network that reaches every court of the human and demon worlds. Lapis Lazuli, despised within the firm as a half-blood, becomes his personal merchant and ultimately his State Minister, the second pillar of his army. The relationship is reciprocal: the Demon Lords who buy from Kunkuska are, in the words of the firm, living certificates of its trustworthiness, so Dantalion's mere patronage props up its name even as it props up his.

**The master behind the counter — Ivar Lodbrok (ch. 244, 250, 311-312)** The true head of Kunkuska is Ivar Lodbrok, a True Ancestor vampire and the single richest being in the demon realm, who has commanded the trade for centuries like 'a god of the business world.' Ivar rules through puppet bodies — most often the male shell 'Buphe' — and visiting his real form at the Niflheim headquarters is likened to a tourist walking into the Vatican and demanding to meet the Pope. Beneath the commerce burns a private hatred: Ivar despises the Demon Lords for the destruction of his vampire clan, and once branded himself a slave to a human hero solely for the chance to see every Demon Lord killed, throwing away the career, connections and fortune of thousands of years. Dantalion, alone among the Lords, treats Ivar as an equal — repaying old debts, refusing to threaten the firm even when he could turn Barbatos, Marbas and Gamigin against it — and slowly binds the vengeful merchant to his cause.

**The eternal price (ch. 483-486)** In the end Kunkuska's mistress is undone by the very loyalty Dantalion cultivated. Having sworn to take any punishment without knowing her crime, Ivar Lodbrok is condemned to the cruellest sentence of all: to play Dantalion forever. With the protagonist's faked death, she who commanded the greatest trading house in the demon realm — the ruler of Kunkuska, the lord of Niflheim, the grey cardinal of the Demon Lords — must surrender her every identity and live out eternity wearing his face, smiling his smile and concealing his death from all who loved him. The company that began as a one-stop shop for demon errands ends as the engine of a vampire's everlasting masquerade, while Lapis Lazuli, who once scrubbed its lowest floor, climbs from Kunkuska's gutter to become a nation's minister before whom even Ivar bows.

Kunkuska is a strictly merit-based, all-demon firm that ranks its own staff (a rank-5 clerk like Lapis is the lowest grade) and its clients alike (from F up to A). Customer rank governs what may be bought: an F-rank buyer manages a well-forged longsword or goblin armour, while an A-rank buyer may purchase a living dragon. The company also functions as a bank, lending Demon Lords 'emergency money' at punishing interest, and retains several mercenary guard corps with the wealth to hire more — defaulters are met without mercy, as the rank-25 Demon Lord Glasya-Labolas learned when 36 demon legions stormed his dungeon over seventy years of unpaid interest. Demon Lords who buy from Kunkuska serve as living certificates of its trustworthiness, which is why their mere patronage upholds the firm's name. Its standing motto is 'We can even supply a dragon's horn!' — for the right price.

Per the afterword to chapter 11, the Kunkuska Trading Company is a parody of the Gyungyuska trading house from the web novel 'Nest-Building Dragon', an acknowledged influence on Dungeon Defense.