Well, before I kicked the second story off, I figured I may as well give a bit of a recap since it’s been a while. Unless, of course, you only read the first book after the second was already available. Or if you’re a time traveler or otherwise live in an area where time travels more quickly than it does for me.

Anyway, barring all of that headache-inducing stuff, here’s a recap that you may or may not actually need.

It all started back in Comic-Con. Me and 1000 other people were given special VIP passes that ended up being a bit more than we bargained for, as it turned out it was also a one-way ticket to another world.

We were brought to a gamelike fantasy world, and everyone was ecstatic about the chance... Except for me. While most people became [Warriors], [Wizards], or [Rogues], I was stuck with a class that made me want to go home immediately. [Demon Lord].

However, besides being made the big bad, I also had to deal with the fact that my class was 100% useless in a fight for reasons that I couldn’t fathom.

Fortunately, I met Jake, the chosen [Hero], and he took pity on me and let me into his party. I didn’t tell him that I was the [Demon Lord] though, just that I was useless. He quickly threw together a party of 8, and we made our way to try to be the first to hit level 5 and clear the tutorial.

We even ended up picking up a 9th and final party member when she tried to steal from our party and accidentally bit off a bit more than she could chew. It turns out that even thieves shy away from stealing the totally unique sword from the [Hero] chosen to save the world.

We… had a few problems working together, though. Okay, it was mostly my fault. The tutorial seemed like it was out to get me as the giant ants (ugh, if I didn’t have to think about dungeon ants in a million years, it would still be too soon) would call in reinforcements and would only attack me.

The good news about that was that the party ended up leveling up to 4 basically right off the bat. The bad news was that I was dropped down to 1 HP and didn’t level at all because the party couldn’t share experience with me due to the joys of my class.

We made our way back to the giant obelisk in the initial zone, and after trying to claim it, I died in a fiery explosion.

… That was only the first of a depressing number of deaths. At least in the tutorial, I could just respawn back at the obelisk at level 1.

I tried to do some fighting on my own, and after getting incredibly frustrated, I accidentally set my Demon Lord form to wrath form. Not that I had a clue what that meant, aside from feeling a bit angrier.

Anyway, half of our party eventually leveled to 5 after a frantic battle with a mimic and 3 elite ants. Which I didn’t actually get to see because I started it by becoming mimic food.

Unfortunately, Garrett and Lindsey died in that battle and were back at level 1 with me, so it was just us 3 left. Fortunately, there was another party that I convinced to help us out. Contrabassoon Idiosyncrasy. Or I guess Doom Fury as they called themselves, not that I ever purposefully got it right (hey, in my defense… Garrett started it).

With their help, we baited in hordes of monsters to the starting room and eventually got everyone out of the tutorial, except for me. Yikes, “except for me” could practically be the arc words of the tutorial…

Fortunately, or unfortunately (it’s still hard to say which), I wasn’t completely alone. Gertrude, the [Berserker] and 100-year-old WW2 vet, was left along with me. We ended up facing hordes of monster ants together, and we grew a bit closer together… At least until I made the mistake of revealing that I was the [Demon Lord], and she of all people recognized what that meant.

We fought, and… it wasn’t even close. I have to admit that I’m still a bit scared of her even to this day. At least her killing me was enough to get her out of the tutorial.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was sent out to a small village named Faroff. After showing up in the middle of the night unannounced and having an impromptu [Trial] (that ended up getting our [Rogue] imprisoned), the party was treated to a feast and shown a prophecy that basically said they were the ones who were going to save the world from the [Demon Lord].

Shortly after, Faroff had its first monster attack, and the [Hero] got his first quest to save some [Lumberjacks] that were under attack. Garrett had gone with them and managed to hold the monster wolves off, but an alpha wolf showed up and nearly killed a villager.

That was the catalyst that allowed Jake to unlock his first [Hero] skill. [Sunder]. The most stupidly overpowered skill in the world that pretty much carried the entire party. No, I’m not salty about him being handed easy mode on a platter. You’re imagining things.

As for me, while the party took to being bodyguards for the people that went out into the forest, I finally found the boss room of the tutorial dungeon. The only thing standing between me and level 5 was hundreds of ants and a Giant Ant Queen. I eventually made it through that fight with hundreds if not thousands of deaths, literal months’ worth of attempts, abusing my [Fire Immunity] to sneak rests in the lava, and then accidentally cheesing the boss by having us both fall outside the world.

I hit level 8 because of the level difference and was practically showered in achievements that would finally let me function like a typical adventurer. However, I finally noticed that something had been off with several of the messages I had gotten from the “System.”

That was when I met AltSys. Or at least, that was the name I gave him since he never told me what it was. Our relationship was… complicated, to say the least. I had a lot to blame him for since he freely admitted that he had brought all of us there with no way to return, but he also gave me sound advice about how I should spend my points. Or at least, so I thought.

I ended up getting slow HP regen, the ability to use skills, and the perk that has been the cause of so much of my grief. [Memory Protection]. The perk seemed functionally useless for quite some time, and it made it so that when I met a 2nd admin (who said I could call him… Admin), he could not remove my class from me. However, given what I know about Admin now, I think it’s a pretty safe guess that he wasn’t planning to anyway. Given his demonic tendencies, it’s much more likely it would’ve been a process I wouldn’t have survived.

And that was just the first time it saved my bacon. Without [Memory Protection], I wouldn’t be here to tell this story since I wouldn’t have made it through the [Demon Lord] reincarnation cycle thing intact. Well… Mostly intact.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Where was I?

Right. I just cleared the boss.

I was reunited with the party in Faroff (after a bit of confusion and a near-death experience), and we prepared to head out on our grand quest to defeat me.

Then the [Demon Lord] struck!... In my defense, it was a complete accident.

If I stay in a town with a zone next to it that is either neutral or belongs to the Demon Lord Faction, a giant monster wave spawns in the night and attacks. Whoops.

I heard them coming and rushed out to fight them while calling the alarm, only for the second part to be useless because the monster wave put everyone in town into a magical sleep. I managed to make it back to Jake and roused him so that the party could defend the town, and we made it through with a close call for Garrett and me.

I finally met Admin during clean-up the next day. He sent me some angry and perplexed messages and threatened to delete me, but he gave me a quest in the end. Activate the 4 elemental dungeons and open a portal to Hell (yeah, it initially said demonic realms, but that was before the “chat filter” was updated), and I would get sent home.

I… reluctantly accepted.

I decided to go out to the forest to think (read, kill monsters) and ended up giving the party a scare. Then Tim, our haughty underaged dog-eared [Wizard], decided to challenge me to a duel. Actually, to several duels back-to-back since he apparently didn’t realize his class was garbage at that.

Things got a bit out of hand, and our dwarf [Cleric] and resident overprotective father nearly killed me with a healing spell. Yeah, [Healing Inversion] sucks.

Anyway, I stormed off and didn’t realize that Megan was tailing me. And due to my habit of talking to myself, she ended up finding out my secret. Instead of immediately alerting Jake, she decided to partner with me instead to make sure I at least claimed a few of the dungeons. In her words, “I’m sure that the saviors of the world will have a lot more stuff to take than they will if we stop you right now.”

Sigh. And yes, that’s the girl I fell in love with. I sure know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?

Anyway, we all wanted to get the show on the road and head to the first dungeon, but given that the [Demon Lord] had just attacked, we couldn’t leave Faroff defenseless. We came to a somewhat risky decision. Since the [Demon Lord] couldn’t spawn a monster wave if there was no zone for it, we just had to claim the nearby dungeon.

The reason that was risky? Well, no one had cleared a dungeon yet, mind you. And I was in the tutorial for an extra 6 months. It was mostly just known that parties that went into dungeons didn’t come back.

Well, we ignored that because we had a [Hero] and therefore had to have industrial strength plot armor on our side, so we ventured into the caves that were in the middle of the forest. After having some inter-party bickering and discovering I had no clue how to work with a party anymore.

Then we made it into the caves and discovered a few new types of enemies. After overcoming my arachnophobia in the worst way possible, we also found some dungeon loot in the form of a very obvious chest. I warned the party it was probably a mimic. They didn’t believe me, and it ate Jake.

The [Hero] of the world was dead just like that, and the party was stunned.

Until none of that happened. The other benefit of [Memory Protection] was that I could keep my memories whenever the server would rollback. Which primarily seemed to happen whenever Jake would die, but that wasn’t the only time. Anyway, after being very disoriented (those rollbacks always came with so little warning), I managed to save Jake from an acidic fate.

We then fought an elemental wolf matriarch that had a stupid gimmick. It turned out that you could only hurt the elemental wolves with their same element. That took us far too long to figure out, but we managed to defeat it thanks to Sam and I having all the different elements covered.

The obelisk appeared, and AltSys told me I could get an achievement for claiming it. So, I did a stupid and claimed a zone for the Demon Lord Faction right in front of the [Hero]. That nearly got me killed and almost split the party in two. However, they eventually decided to just keep an eye on me instead since they figured the worst-case scenario was that the earth dungeon would be claimed, and they would have 3 more shots at stopping me.

The party all upgraded their classes since apparently that’s a thing that happens at level 10, and I finally got to see a listing of all of my perks.  Oh, and I created a new type of monster due to getting the ability to cast spells and also picking up [Summon Monster]. Then I proceeded to accidentally name the species “daves.” Oops.

Anyway, the [Hero’s] upgrades included an [Enhanced Interface] perk that let him finally see the wrath aura I’d been leaking out ever since I set my form. Pulling that in made things a lot more manageable with the party, and we made our way south.

On the way south, I first had Alpha Slayer the dave fight… No, wait, sorry that didn’t happen to me. Well, it happened to me, but not the me that’s talking to you. Urgh. Darn multiverse.

So, from there, I took the ottos and… That’s still not me. I kind of wish it was, though. That was one dang wholesome universe.

Does it still count as envy if the person you’re envying is you?

Sorry. Got distracted. Where was I?

Right. The swamp.

The swamp was nasty, but we were fortunate that the daves basically hard-countered everything in there. Stranglevines can’t drown something that doesn’t breathe, and crocs have a hard time death rolling something with no limbs.

It was there that I had my first kiss… It was sloppy, tasted like a swamp, and was done expressly to shove as much air into Megan’s lungs as possible. She… teased me mercilessly about that.

It also gave the party the wrong impression that we were dating, and we decided that we may as well roll with it to get more time alone to plot.

We searched for about a month in that dang swamp, trying to find the dungeon, and eventually found it underwater of all places. Or at least, I found it. That meant I had to claim it without the party knowing, and Megan and I made a plan. During her turn to watch me, I would go in and try to clear it.

Unfortunately, that left me with only an hour to take on a dungeon, and the lake around the dungeon was teeming with crocs and stranglevines.

Fortunately, an army of daves saw me through to the dungeon safely. Then I found out the good and the bad news. The good news, I didn’t have to clear the dungeon by myself. The bad news, I had to set up the dungeon, and I had still only had an hour.

The dungeon I ended up creating was a bit of a disaster. I confused lesser and minor earth elementals and accidentally spammed a whole bunch of level 10 monsters all over the place (I… still get those confused regularly). I made ineffectual traps (including a boulder that I ended up getting hit by in place of Megan). And I ended up letting the party skip the entirety of my maze due to not remembering to make the dungeon keys disappear after use.

Then the dungeon boss (accidentally named “A Giant Dave”) nearly killed Tim and Andrew. Well, I guess it did technically kill them, but the server rolled back, so it was fine.

That ended up mostly putting me in the clear, though. Having Megan vouch for me, and there being “no way I could complete that dungeon by myself in an hour,” meant that the party mostly gave up their suspicions.

Which was good because after seeing Tim die in front of me, I was a bit shaken and done trying to complete the quest. Even if that meant that I would be stranded in Placeholder forever.

Oh yeah. Megan also dumped me right after that. Or at least she broke up our fake relationship. Either way, that day kinda sucked.

After that, I got to talk to my two favorite admins again. Admin mostly just yelled at me, and I threw gas on the fire by taunting him. Then AltSys let me basically have a Q&A where I learned a lot of things.

Including the fact that by some measures, no one I had met, admins included, existed. Yeah, all of us being just “bits on a server” should probably have made me freak out a bit more than it did.

However, I didn’t get to spend too long moping because we received an urgent [Message] from Doom Fury (okay, I’ll give them their name this time. Mostly because I don’t think I can top Contrabassoon Idiosyncrasy) that Faroff was under attack from undead.

I raced back there in time to save Rich… from a horde of zombies that I had likely inflated due to my presence causing increased monster spawns. Oops. Well, he didn’t have to know that bit.

Anyway, with a horde of daves, we managed to push back the undead, and I even managed to create an army of monsters and become a [General]. I recruited more monsters and summoned daves and took the fight to the boss in charge of all of that madness. The heart of undeath.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

… Which I had accidentally summoned by leaving out too many daves in the wilderness.

Anyway, my army fought valiantly, and we won due to grit, tactics, and bear shock cavalry. The only three things any army needs.

After that was over, I had some time to kill. I dueled Rich a few times and almost changed their party’s name but decided against it. Also, I met Jake. Not Jake Smith the [Hero], but Jake The Magnificent Master of Earth and Fire. Yes, that was his last name.

Oh, right. I’ve forgotten to mention patches all this time. Or at least, that’s what I took to calling them.

You see, Placeholder (which was the actual name of the world I was brought to) wasn’t exactly in a complete state. So, oftentimes someone would point out something glaringly obvious, and the System would just… change it. And then any attempts to remember what it used to be like would be met with headaches and confusion and a desire to not look into it further.

There were a couple of them. Torches were initially unnecessary in caves. The System couldn’t decide whether they were female [Sorcerers] or [Sorceresses]. And people originally didn’t have last names. Anyway, I bring that up here because [Memory Protection] made me immune to all of that. So, when the huge patch went through that gave everyone in Placeholder a last name, I didn’t get one.

Which is actually kind of helpful sometimes, but I don’t want to spoil too much.

Anyway, I helped Rich and company clear the Faroff forest dungeon since I didn’t have anything else to do, and I left behind several daves in the boss room.

I also got to witness a bit of party drama as they kicked Jake out, but I didn’t stick around to see how it panned out. 1 it wasn’t my problem. 2 I was back to my usual state of being chased around by monster wolves.

I met back up with the party, who saved me from the wolves with a timely party invite, and it was finally time to say goodbye to Faroff for good.

We began our long trek north and immediately ran into a bit of relationship drama.

I mostly patched things up with Emilia. I accidentally convinced Sam to confess her feelings to Garrett (hey, forcing her via duel still counts, right?), and I got a bit closer to Lindsey mostly by virtue of her beating the tar out of me in sparring matches.

After that, things got sketchy. I elected to head on by myself to try to get out of the zone since the party wasn’t able to travel as quickly as I could alone, and I was also putting them in danger.

The zone was much bigger than I expected, and monster spawns happened practically on top of each other.

I somehow managed to make my way across that forest by hiding in trees, having them felled underneath me, and then sprinting to the next one. Pretty heroic, right?

Anyway, after finding the “boss room” of the forest and punching a bear constellation in the face, I finally had enough perk points to get the party interface perk and join the party for real. And let me tell you. That was a weird experience. With Jake’s [Enhanced Party] perk, we could practically read each other’s minds in combat, and grinding a few more levels at the boss was a breeze.

That finally got me over the level 10 hump, and I gained a [Demon Lord] skill, [Disrupt]. While not quite on par with [Sunder], a skill that let me unilaterally say “nope” to a single skill or spell every minute was pretty dang good.

Oh. I suppose I would be remiss not to mention it, but that’s also when Sam decided to adopt one of my daves as her pet. David Junior. Well… Technically, David Junior the Second since David Junior the First didn’t survive all that long.

Anyway, we soon found ourselves in a slightly larger town than Faroff. DeepMine. Which, was pretty on-the-nose about what the town was about, but I guess Faroff was probably even worse.

After a couple of kids decided to enforce a “whatever you can grab” entry tax to the city, Megan and I followed them and ended up taking down a criminal empire in a single day. Well, empire is much too grand to describe it, but you get the picture.

Oh, and then Jake and the rest of the party helped me take down a nearby dungeon that same night. Then I spent all night mining and picked up the [Miner] class.

I forget how busy that day was sometimes.

The villagers were grateful both for saving them from the crime ring, clearing the dungeon, and also for me basically single-handedly putting their next iron shipment back on schedule. So, we were treated to a party.

Where I got unequivocally, totally, plastered.

I almost stayed in town after midnight and had a good chance of spawning a monster wave. Fortunately, Megan decided to help me out, and she even protected me for an hour or so until I was sober.

She tried to tell me that she was leaving the party and going her own way, but I convinced her to stay by telling her… That I loved her.

…

Sorry, even after all this time... Why couldn’t I have just let you go?

……….

Okay. I’m good. You aren’t here to listen to a [Demon Lord] mope around, are you?

Anyway, after that was all over, we secured a ride to Vir. Not to the person, but to the capital city. Ugh. I still hate that naming scheme. It’s like New York, New York, but worse.

For the most part, we had a pleasant ride. It felt a lot like a vacation. Then we got to a stupid stretch of dirt between DeepMine and a town called Holdover.

It had another unnamed zone, and once again, I tried to make my way through it ahead of the party since the spawn rates were too high. The main difference? I didn’t have a bunch of trees to climb to bail myself out whenever I needed a rest.

I somehow managed to make it all the way through by performing enough mental gymnastics to rest in between attacks in combat and make use of two separate auras to better control the monsters that were coming at me. It was utterly exhausting, and when I made it through and accidentally spawned a monster wave AND a heart of undeath, I… may have just pawned off all the fighting to my monsters and a random group of adventurers I met there. Oh, and Jake, who [Sundered] the heart for us. Apparently, I gave him quite a scare, and he chased after me.

Then we finally made it to the capital city. I stood [Trial] and got arrested for a ridiculous number of assaults because of how I handled things in DeepMine, and then I couldn’t even pay my fine because of my lack of an inventory. Even though I had more than enough money after all of the monsters I fought.

Everyone else paid off their fines, but I was hauled off to jail where the [King] offered me a duel. If a monster wave spawned that night because of me, I would be exiled to the southern swamp. He would support the party and their quest to defeat the [Demon Lord] if it didn’t.

Fortunately, in a rare stroke of user-friendliness, the System had actually warned me that spawning a wave was disabled in a capital city. So, after winning that sucker’s bet, I was free to go, and I’d secured the party some extra funds.

I wandered around town and was eventually caught by Megan as I bought her a piece of jewelry. A simple emerald necklace.

…Okay, Titus. Don’t dwell on that. Keep it moving.

Megan and I decided to ask around to see if anyone had been looking for a way home. The answer was a resounding no. Apparently, I was the odd one out for actually having a stable life back on Earth, so that avenue of research was cut off pretty quickly.

Our party was then given horses, and we made our way north. However, Jake was increasingly disturbed by some prophecy that he and he alone had heard.

After enough badgering, he finally gave in and told it to me.

It basically promised hardship for him, and then something terrible for 7 of the 8 of the rest of us. The last two being one to betray and one to die.

I promised him that I would help him fight that prophecy. Only to have to eat my words in such a short time…

A nearby town came under attack from a dragon who came in, torched the place, and then ran off back through a portal to the dragonlands. I managed to save a young girl from the fire, but we knew that the dragon could come back any time.

We elected.. to chase it.

…

It was a disaster. It ambushed us, and only the fact that the server rolled back saved us. I had time to [Disrupt] one breath attack and then take a tail whip meant for Jake.

But then I was dropped to critical HP.

AltSys had warned me that I unlocked a class feature at level 10 that was dangerous, and I found it out in the worst way possible. After level 10, when I drop to low enough HP, I automatically enter my Demon Lord form. In this case, I became the Demon Lord of Wrath.

A level 25 hulking monstrosity of burning rage and little rational thought. In some ways, it was just what we needed. I was able to go toe-to-toe with the dragon and kill it with relative ease.

The problem?

The party was near enough to register as my next target.

They tried to talk me down, but I… I…

I killed Megan. The woman I love.

The party ended up making the right call and fleeing after that. However, it was now known beyond a reasonable doubt. I was the [Demon Lord]. And I was a murderer.

When that form finally expired, I had no one to blame but myself… And the person who had brought me to Placeholder and made me the [Demon Lord] in the first place.

I swore revenge on AltSys and decided that my only path forward would be to complete the quest and go home. Both to talk to Admin again to see if he could make AltSys pay and so that Admin would be required to send me home based on the quest he had given me.

I knew that I would need some levels to take on the party, so I managed to take down a dragon with an army of daves and leveled to 18. It also gave me 10 more perk points, but I didn’t exactly have anywhere to spend them.

From there, the race was on to the ice dungeon.

I climbed mountains (which was awful), fought gargoyles (which were low-budget), and finally realized that I could outrun most of the monsters that were chasing me (which was about freaking time).

I ended up catching up to the party, and Jake tried to convince me to stand down.

I told him I would… If he could promise I would be forgiven, and everything would go back to how it was before. I knew it wouldn’t happen even before the words were out of my mouth.

After faking a monster wave, I made my break from the party and continued my way north.

The travel north was a bit strange. I accidentally started another monster wave, met a party of adventurers, and accidentally helped duels be patched to no longer be 100% binding by the System.

Hmm. I wonder how it tried to reconcile that with the duels I had with Sam and [King] Vir? I guess we’ll never know. I never did get any details.

I continued my swimming north and ended up crossing the sea… Ocean?... Large body of water that was north of dwarven and elven lands. Look, I never got to see it on a map before that point, okay? I just know I swam a lot.

Then I encountered a frozen wasteland… which was basically Gertrude’s paradise. High-level enemies, a land ruled by [Berserkers], and she was the [Queen]. Well, the [Berserk Queen].

We had a duel that I ended up losing, and I became her prisoner. Fortunately, the fact that she had stockpiled hundreds of monster corpses, and she wasn’t letting her [Berserkers] loot them out on the ice plains, meant that I had a heart of undeath spawn to cover my grand escape from prison.

Or I guess not so grand. Depends on what you count [Fire Striking] and daving my way through sheets of ice.

Either way, I was free to continue my search for the ice dungeon, and I found it soon enough. I prepared the dungeon and waited. I was still not wanting to completely ruin the world, demon portal quest or no, so having a claimed zone for longer than necessary seemed like a bad plan.

When the party finally showed up, I claimed the zone right ahead of them. Then I picked up [Flash Step], [Hell Blaze], and the inventory, armor, and weapon use perks.

Of course, the party wasn’t going to just let me leave. So, I had a good old-fashioned 7 on 1 fight. I really shouldn’t have won that fight, but [Disrupt] carried the day by getting rid of Jake’s [Enhanced Party] perk and basically all of the party’s coordination. That and a lucky disarm of Jake’s weapon (into my new inventory) was basically enough to declare me the winner.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing because [Flash Step] landed me on my face the first time I used it, and I couldn’t cast [Hell Blaze] because of the chat filter.

Despite that, I won, and the party and I parted once again.

I told them I would see them at the fire dungeon, but I didn’t expect Jake’s trickery.

Jake agreed with me about meeting at the fire dungeon, but he lied to me for once. He came up with the bright idea of skipping past the fire dungeon and going directly to the air one. Which, looking back on it, actually had a good chance of working if he just hadn’t sent Richard off to try to stop me at the fire dungeon.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself because there was another encounter of note before I made it to the fire dungeon. The fey.

Shakespearean-English-speaking masters of charms and illusions. And also possibly cannibalistic, but I thankfully wasn’t in a position to confirm that one.

Wait… Is it still cannibalism if they eat other sapients, but not other fey?

… Hmm… Looks like google just says that they would probably just be “man-eaters,” but that isn’t quite accurate either. I may have just discovered a new and exciting way to be put on a watchlist.

Oh. Sorry, got sidetracked again. Anyway, I got somewhat lost at sea and stumbled upon the fey woods. After a few attempts to lure me into them, the queen of the fey got fed up and teleported me directly in.

From there, it was a battle of wits and an attempt to remain a “good guest” so that my guest rights would not be revoked. I managed to both not offend the queen (who tried every trick in the book to make me give offense) and to win in a majority of the “trials.”

After making it out of there alive (even though the queen tried to drown me when she teleported me out), I got two more achievements for another 10 perk points.

Next up was the fire dungeon, and Richard and Co. actually managed to somewhat intercept me. They tried to talk me down, but… it was too late for me to give up my plans.

We fought, and they were a lot more put together than Jake’s party was. Even without an OP [Hero], they managed to land quite a bit of damage on me and then distract me as their [Rogue] went to try to claim the dungeon behind my back.

(Un)fortunately, they couldn’t claim the obelisk. Only the [Hero] or his party could.

Nick, their [Rogue] also ended up letting slip enough of a hint that I realized Jake’s plan and took off running for the air dungeon right after claiming the fire one.

Not that that was the end of the annoyance they gave me. Ethan, their [Wizard], managed to use [Message] and their contacts to put up a somewhat effective blockade. I had to fight my way past dozens, if not hundreds, of adventurers.

I would have had a lot rougher of a time if one of them hadn’t caused a patch right in front of me for holy water. That gave me an idea, and I convinced him that we should be able to say “Hell” when we’re specifically talking about the place demons come from. Boom. [Hell Blaze] was now castable.

…However, the fact that it has black flames and leaves the target burning for a bit definitely didn’t make me feel like a good person.

Meanwhile, Jake had also done his fair share of patching, and he was starting to catch onto it despite the System’s attempts to make him not. Pushing a bit too hard landed him the [Grit] skill and a bit of a lecture from AltSys.

That skill ended up being needed when we met once again. This time it was at the Great Central Mountains, in the middle of the night… during a snowstorm. Could I just summarize that by saying it was really cold? Yeah, that probably works.

Anyway, he chased me up the side of the mountain, and his [Grit] skill let him shrug off some of the downsides of the chilled status effect. However, it didn’t do anything against the frozen status effect.

Jake took a plunge, and I ended up diving off the side of the mountain to save him once again. I also nearly wrenched both my arms out of their sockets, but fortunately, video game bodies seem to mean that doesn’t happen so long as you have HP.

Anyway, he tried to talk me down once again. We argued, and I finally revealed to him that we all don’t even exist anyway. However, he had a really good point that basically boiled down to “so what?”

Being the gracious loser that I am, I ignored his valid points and stormed off.

I think I just didn’t want to have to deal with the fact that I may as well have been dooming real people.

After a long climb, I made it to the top of the mountain only to find myself a few mana points short of the fare needed to use the teleporter to the dungeon.

So, I waited for the party to come and give me a lift. I hid underneath the snow and [Flash Stepped] onto the platform right as they got ready to use it.

From there, we teleported up into a glass castle in the sky and raced for the obelisk. I ended up with the upper hand there because it was in first-time setup mode, which means I had complete control of the terrain.

Despite all of that, Jake got to the obelisk just a few seconds behind me and [Sundered] me right as I finished setup.

He held back just a bit, though, and I survived in critical HP.

My wrath-addled brain decided to give him a lightning elemental to deal with because of his OP lightning-based skill, and my demon lord form took a nice topple off the top of the mountain to give me the world record descent time.

After that… I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I had 6 months to make it to the portal and activate it, so I had at least a few months to kill.

I sent a [Message] to Jake telling him about the time limit, saved a young woman from a life of banditry, broke the world by putting an obelisk in my inventory… Oh yeah, I kind of forgot about that. AltSys wasn’t terribly happy about that.

Anyway, after that, I visited Megan’s grave, spent a lot of money on stuff, and then got completely plastered again.

And ended up broke and in jail. Oops.

I debated trying to escape but decided to wait it out. Until James, the [Guard Commander], informed me that I would be held as an enemy combatant instead. Then, I broke out of jail. And accidentally tormented a poor [Clerk] by stealing his records and burning them.

From there, I made my way west. I encountered a long stretch of mountains with a very suspicious pass that ended up going all the way through them.

My conclusion was that it was the path the demons were supposed to take when they came to conquer the world.

Either way, it was a straight shot into the completely barren ashlands after that.

After trekking through that ashen wasteland, I made it to my castle. I took my time setting it up, found out about the [Dungeon Master] subclass and nearly pulled my hair out, and leveled to 25 by killing an ash dragon in my basement.

After that, I spent an inordinate amount of time practicing [Elemental Strike], [Flash Step], and using my knives for parrying. I also summoned literal tons of daves in preparation for my fight with the party… Which is impressive because daves don’t weigh that much.

Anyway, the party arrived at my castle with only an hour left, in true heroic fashion. However, an hour was all the party needed as they speedran my dungeon and arrived with time to spare at my throne room.

Sam gave one last try to talk me down, but I refused, and the fight was on.

Even with level 25 and all of the summons that I had, the fight was close. Several situations could have swung the battle either way. The party also had several displays of cunning that left me cursing my stupidity for falling for them.

However, in the end, I defeated the party and somehow managed to keep them all alive.

I thought I had done it. I thought I had what I wanted… I also thought that I would be going home.

However, Admin was one of the demons that came through the portal. Or at least, his avatar if I understood his yelling at me correctly.

He wasn’t keen on honoring the agreement like I thought it would have to be. He was more than willing to send me “home.” To his home, AKA Hell.

I frantically tried to fight back, but he was literally twice my level, and I stood about as much chance as a kitten fighting a bodybuilder.

As I laid there dying, I had one last card to play. I tricked Admin into killing Jake and causing a server reset.

When I reset back to before the portal opened, I came up with only 1 play that would work out.

I convinced Jake that he had to [Sunder] me so hard that I wouldn’t have a chance to go into demon lord form.

As he powered up with [Limit Break] and shone brighter than the sun, I consoled myself with the thoughts that maybe Megan ended up in a better place than where I was going.

And with that… I died.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of things.

I don’t know why that fact surprises me. How many times had I heard stories with a big bad who comes back to cause terror every few decades, only to be defeated by a new chosen hero?

The only unfortunate thing with my revival was that my subconscious had been left with all the trauma I hadn’t processed. All my fears and struggles. All my pain and death. And all my heartache and sorrow.

So, it’s safe to say that when I woke up and immediately had my demon lord form set to madness that I didn’t have a screw loose… It was a bit closer to say that I didn’t have a single one that was still tight.

And I, of course, found myself back in the place where this whole mess had started.

The tutorial.