For the reader who has been paying attention, it will come as no surprise that I advocate a strong work ethic for any aspiring Evil Overlord: Hard work is nothing to be afraid of; especially if someone else is doing it. Working hard is good, and working smart is better. Lazy Evil Overlords soon become dead or deposed Evil Overlords. None of this is what you might call revelatory.

And yet I am certain that some of you, with the best will in the world and a deep desire to learn, still don’t really understand. You haven’t got the ability to take these simple concepts and apply them to your own situation, for whatever reason. The good news is that I’m going to help you with that. The bad news is you might be somewhat thick. But that’s alright.

Let’s say your job is to kill a slavering monster every day (metaphorically or literally). If your job is to kill a slavering monster, it is best to do it first thing in the morning. And if your job is to chop two slavering monsters to bloody gobbets daily, then it is best that you do in the biggest one first.

That’s it. Tackle the shit job first thing, rather than putting it off. Do the shittiest job first.

If you make this your accustomed approach to life, I guarantee you that you’ll quickly find yourself further down the road to Utter Domination than your less-disciplined peers. All else being equal, brilliant but lazy does not trump an average mind with a solid work ethic.

Of course, if you’re just dumb as dog shit then there’s no help for you, really. Sorry about that.

~ * ~

When I was finished with the speechifying I hopped down off the barrel and happened to land near Orson’s widow. She was sobbing quietly now, beating at her breast with a fist. It was putting rather a damper on the party atmosphere I had hoped to promote among Mudhelm’s citizens. I turned to Grim.

“Was this Orson’s brewery or hers?”

“Titus didn’t really let women own things. The Council didn’t think much of women either, which was one reason among many they wanted to get rid of me.”

I frowned. I can’t say that I’d thought much about the plight of women in society up to then in my life. What had occupied my thoughts from a very early age was, to a vast degree, me, and I didn't happen to be female. Mostly when I did think about women, it had been to think about whether I wanted to sleep with them, and if so whether they would sleep with me, and if so, how much it would cost. But some of the most important (if not always beneficial) people in my life happened to not be men: My mother, and then Chortle, and now Grim.

None of them were inferior to men in any way, shape or form.

I will be honest: it didn’t bother me particularly that it was wrong for women to be treated as inferior, so much as it was stupid. Inefficient. Wasteful. Mudhelm was a shithole with very little in the way of resources or talent, and the idea of putting half the population above the other half based on what was between their legs, regardless of ability, was idiotic.

I turned back to the grieving widow. “Oi. Woman. Do you have any idea how to run a brewery?”

She looked up at me, hate in her tear-reddened eyes. “Who d’you think’s been running it these thirty years?”

I pointed up to her husband’s dangling corpse, and she spat.

“The only thing he managed was to get hisself hanged and me penniless.”

“Come with me,” I said, turning to the brewery.

“Die in a fire,” she replied, and I turned back around.

“That’s exactly the one way I will never die, actually. Look, I don’t have the time or interest to run a brewery. I also don’t have the time or interest to care about your feelings. You either get up right now and follow me, or you can go on and get a head start on your new homeless and penniless existence.”

I started walking towards the brewery. Grim and her goons followed. Then, after a moment, the widow did, too.

I went and found the foreman. He didn’t like me, probably because I was giving away barrel after barrel of his hard work, but he was smart enough not to opine.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” I told him. “What’s your opinion on the widow Orson’s business acumen?”

“Eh?”

“Does the lady know what the fuck she’s doing or not?” I asked, pointing to the lady in question.

“Oh. She does.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Are you happy working for her?”

“Happy enough.”

“Wonderful.” I looked at her. “You are now in charge of my brewery. Your compensation will be twenty-five percent of the net profits. If you try to cheat me, I will burn your feet off so that you can begin your new existence as a street beggar with an advantage. I will expect a weekly accounting. Is that clear?”

“Yes. I still hate you. And I want my house back, too.”

Grim cleared her throat. “It kind of burned down last night, actually. The boys got a bit overexcited.”

I smiled at the widow Orson. “You can certainly have whatever’s left.”

Her eyes bulged. She opened her mouth to say something likely unkind and almost certainly unwise, then shut it again. Her jaw was tight as she gritted her teeth.

“I just learned that trick a few days ago myself. Enjoy your day, then.”

#

I tasked Grim and her goons with confiscating everything that could vaguely be considered valuable from all the properties we’d seized, along with every scrap of paperwork and private correspondence, especially from the council chamber around the back of the brewery.

“Bring it all to the Dripping Bucket. I’ll meet you there tonight.”

“And what are you going to do while I’m doing all the drudge work?” She wasn’t exactly frowning, but she certainly wasn’t smiling.

“I’m going to sift through the wreckage of the bastion for anything valuable. We can switch if you like.”

“Uh. Nah.” She obviously hadn’t forgotten that Hrazz’k was still floating above his former prison, looking demonic and tentacly and just like bad news in general. I started to leave and she called my name.

“Hey, Gar.”

“Yes?”

“Would you really burn her feet off, like you said? The brewer’s wife?”

I thought of Chortle. “I learned a while back that threats are only really effective if you’re willing to follow through on them.”

“Still, that was nice. Ish.”

“You take that back right now. I don’t have the time, interest or know-how to oversee a brewery. She does. That’s it.”

“Well at least you’re not a woman-hater like Titus.”

Titus. He'd had more problems than being a misogynist. Like being a sadist. Who'd tortured me for days. I shrugged. “Fuck that guy.”

Grim gave a little half-smile and then started giving orders to her droogs. I started off towards the bastion, turning down her offer of an escort. Nobody would be happy about getting close to the demon, and I judged the chances of anyone trying to do me in this early in my rule to be low.

Even I make mistakes upon occasion.

#

Unless your plans for Utter Domination call for an army of slaves or undead (which are really just slaves you don’t have to feed or house), you’re going to need one thing above all: money. Somebody who knew what they were talking about once said that money is the sinews of war. Even if you don’t intend to pay your army, even if you don’t have to feed your army, at the very least you’re going to need to equip your army. Sending your dirt-common troops into battle without arms or armor is, by and large, not something I would recommend. Unless you're just a fan of watching limbs and heads getting lopped off, and don't care about losing.

War is a costly thing, is what I’m saying, and only profitable if you win.

I simply didn’t have much in the way of coin, and that was a problem, so I was very much hoping that I would be able to find a decent stash of the shiny stuff amongst the rubble of the bastion’s keep. Titus had to’ve had some kind of treasury; he’d been the top dog around Mudhelm for years. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to picking through rubble, but I needed to.

Of course, I could’ve assembled some sort of work force to do it, but only if I’d had Hrazz’k move off a ways. Nobody wanted to get near the demon, funnily enough. And then there was no telling what sort of larceny might have transpired. No, I was hoping I could get the demon to help me delve. It certainly had enough tentacles.

But gold wasn’t the only reason I was going. I also wanted to speak to Hrazz’k at length. I was fairly certain it could hear me anywhere in Mudhelm now that it’d got its body back; Hrazz’k had talked to me while I was in the Dripping Bucket, after all. But two birds with one stone and all that.

I left the brewery and picked my way through the drunk-fest going on in the street outside. Old Torg had produced a fiddle and was torturing it in between gulps of beer, and dozens if not hundreds of Mudhelm’s other citizens were essentially seeing how quickly they could give themselves alcohol poisoning. The ones who hadn’t thought to bring a mug were getting creative – cupped hands, boots, hats. I got a few half-hearted cheers on my way through. I raised a hand and spoke without stopping.

“No need to applaud. Just get your drunk on.”

That got more cheers, with more sincerity behind them.

There was one fellow who wasn’t cheering or drinking. The elf. He just stared at me with disdain. I mean, elves look at everybody with disdain, but this disdain seemed to be for me specifically rather than the generalized, racist disdain that elves normally exude. I shrugged and continued on my way. The flower-eater’s opinion of me wasn’t something I was going to lose sleep over.

I made it two blocks before I realized he was following me. When I did, I stopped to confront him.

“Something I can do for you?”

He was twenty feet away; not exactly breathing down my neck. But from what I’d seen, elves didn’t really wander Mudhelm. They mostly stuck to their embassy on the edge of town. It had very high and very shiny walls, though apparently you didn’t really see or notice the place unless you were specifically looking for it. Stupid elven magic. Anyway, if they did go out it was always in pairs. Where they went and why I neither knew nor cared.

This one seemed young. Well, they all looked ageless, really, but he didn’t have as much of that weird grace you get after a century or so of not getting old. He had the sneer down, though.

“Mudhelm’s new tyrant. I will give you one chance.”

“Eh?”

“You have released the Bound One.”

“You mean the demon? What’s it to you? Don’t be an asshole and I promise he won’t eat you.”

The elf sneered harder. I was kind of worried he’d pull a muscle in his face. I mean, not worried worried, but.

“Ten thousand years have we watched the watchers, waiting for mortals to fail or forget, as they always do in the end. I give you–”

“You’re ten thousand years old? Somehow I doubt that.”

He looked like he had never been interrupted in his life, and didn’t quite know how to deal with it. “We as in elves, you–”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t what?” He’d completely lost the thread of his threat or monologue or whatever. That’s the thing about elves. They are pricks, and dangerous ones at that, but they like to talk and they never interrupt each other no matter how long-winded. Not that I knew it at the time. I just really didn’t like this asshole.

“You were going to give me one chance to blah blah, probably run away or send the demon back to demon land. If I don’t?”

He pulled out an unnaturally shiny sword and pointed it at me. “Then I will have your head.”