Isabelle stood still. She didn’t know what to do. The Overlord stood in the middle of the courtyard beside Maviel. Though she couldn’t see his face from under his hood, she didn’t necessarily feel intimidated. More than that, she just felt… shocked.
“Maviel—” said the Overlord, “—I fail to see why you thought it was appropriate to have what amounts to playtime with these idiots while your Overlord was prepared to slay a dragon in front of a live, captive audience. A dragon, Maviel. And you weren’t even there to watch!”
“That dragon doesn’t look slain to me,” said Maviel, looking over to see Frimri groaning it discomfort in the distance. “In fact, it looks bored more than anything.”
“Obviously! Because you weren’t there! It was dreadfully embarassing! Now, Maviel, show some respect for your Overlord in front of these measley cretins!” said the Overlord.
“Yes, dear,” sighed Maviel. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the Overlord’s muscular right leg.
“That’s better,” said the Overlord. He looked up to Isabelle. “So. You’re this player I keep hearing about, are you?”
“Yes?” said Isabelle.
“Interesting,” said the Overlord. He scratched his chin, which was only slightly visible under the shroud of his hood. “Very interesting. Would you mind telling me what in the fucking hell you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?” asked Isabelle.
The Overlord coughed and cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you take the first opportunity you did to run and hide? You probably could’ve escaped from me. Of course, I’d find you eventually. Was it just the inevitability of fate that compelled you to come running after me? I will admit, I do like it when women chase me. Ah yes, I love chasers of all kind.” The Overlord equipped a flask, chugged from in, and then equipped another flask and chugged from that. “Ah. Nothing like a good swig of vodka, followed by a good swig of cherry soda. I do love cherry soda. Do you like cherry soda, player? Do you like it like you like tormenting my party members?”
Isabelle furrowed her brow. Was the Overlord actually asking her any of these questions? Did he actually want to talk to her at all? It seemed like the only person the Overlord liked to talk to, was himself.
“Finally!” said Stelas’ severed head from inside the burlap sack hanging off the side of Stelas the horse. “Finally, I’ve been recognized as a tormented party member. Oh, my sweet, dearest Overlord, if I could but kiss your toes in gratitude! What a surreal joy I feel in knowing that soon I’ll be reunited with my body, all thanks to you!”
“Kiss my toes?” said the Overlord. “Who in the fucking hell said that?”
“Stelas Stelford!” said Stelas’ head.
“No fucking clue who that is,” said the Overlord. He took another swig from his first flask, and then one from his second flask. He unequipped them. “It’s going to rain soon.”
“What do you mean?” asked Isabelle. Surely, the Overlord had some sort of ulterior intended meaning behind such a mysterious non-sequitor.
“Nevermind,” said the Overlord. “Look, player, I’ll level with you.”
“Oh, you’ll level with her, but you won’t level with me?” asked Tahsi, taking a big, angry mouthful of bread. “What, are you too good for me or something?”
“Sorry, who is this strange, irksome kobold again?” the Overlord asked Isabelle.
“He’s one of my party members. He’s the one who saved my life, actually,” said Isabelle. She immediately cursed herself for giving away that information to the damned Overlord of all people. He must’ve succeeded in a speechcraft check against her!
“Oh, really?” asked the Overlord. “Well, then, I’ll have to remember to keep him alive after this encounter and add him to my party so I can flay his skin over and over again until I’m satisfied, and then kick him from my party so that he suffers a long, painful, and gruesome death.”
“Thanks, Isabelle,” said Tahsi. “Really appreciate you offering me up to the Overlord on a silver platter.”
Isabelle was frustrated, but she still wasn’t intimidated. “Tahsi, calm down,” she said. “I won’t let the Overlord take you.”
“Pfft!” the Overlord said. He cackled.
Maviel, still stroking the Overlord’s leg, also cackled.
Stelas’ severed head cackled, also.
“You’re fucking hilarious,” said the Overlord. “Sure, you’re a player and you have a system like mine, that much I recognize. But there is no way in hell that you can keep me from doing anything that I want to do. Nobody has been able to keep me from anything for a long, long time, player.” The Overlord pointed to Frimri in the distance. “That dragon is mine, and I am going to kill it, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
“Over my dead body!” said Tahsi. He charged towards the Overlord, fist and bread loaf raised. The Overlord chuckled and pointed a finger at Tahsi. The kobold’s legs buckled as invisble hands grabbed his ankles and pulled him into the air upside down.
“What a fool,” said the Overlord. “Oh, my, what an absolutely asinine companion you’ve chosen, Isabelle.”
So he did know her name.
The Overlord cleared his throat. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you stopped making a mess of my grand domain. It’s giving me a bad name. So why don’t you kneel before me and accept my dissolution request, I’ll take your system from you and your party members, and maybe I’ll let you live out a measley life of insignificance. Hell, tell me where you came from, player, and maybe I can send you back.”
Isabelle felt suddenly conflicted. Was the Overlord speaking the truth? Could he really send her back to her old life?
“What? Has that cat that you’ve added to your party got your tongue?” asked the Overlord. “I’m not lying to you. I can send you back to where you came from. I can give you back what was taken from you.”
It sounded almost tempting. Almost. Though, Isabelle really had enjoyed leveling up. She never got to level up in her old life. She didn’t really have good friends like she did here in Beaubinte with her party members, either. Plus, how could Isabelle just give up and kneel to this evil douchebag?
“Come on, Isabelle, consider it,” said the Overlord. “Surely there is something back in your old life that you’re longing for? That you miss? That feels undone?”
Isabelle remembered the figurative blood, sweat and tears she’d put in to her thesis presentation in anthropology. For a second, she felt the Overlord’s persuasion taking hold. She really had worked hard on that. But, had that Isabelle even been this Isabelle? Was Isabelle even herself anymore? Who was she? What had she become? Why the hell did she care about what level she was? Why didn’t she want to be home? Shouldn’t she have wanted to? Shouldn’t Isabelle have felt guilty for tossing out her old life like a pair of worn shoes?
“Don’t listen to him, Isabelle!” said Tahsi. “He’s just using speechcraft against you, I’m sure of it! Trust me, my int and wis are super high, way higher than yours, I know what I’m talking about!”
Isabelle felt a tinge of fury on hearing Tahsi bring up how high his stats were. Then again, why did she even care?
“Oh, player, you look confused,” said the Overlord. “You don’t really care about stats, do you? You don’t actually like leveling up? Surely you can’t stand all the system notifications. I bet that you would like to open your eyes back in your old life and realize that this all has been some crazy, fucked up dream, right?”
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Isabelle didn’t respond. She didn’t know what to think.
“Isabelle!” said Tahsi. “His char isn’t that high considering how high his level is! He had mixed results on that speechcraft attempt! That’s why you probably don’t know what to think!” Tahsi equipped some bread and took a bite, choking a little. “Wow, bread sure is hard to eat when you’re being held upside down by one of the Overlord’s evil spells.”
“Come on, Isabelle,” said the Overlord. “Look within yourself. Think about what you truly want. Don’t just go with the flow and do what everyone else is telling you to do.”
Isabelle felt tempted to look within herself and think about what she truly wanted, but she stopped herself. Why? Because the Overlord had told her to do that, and if Isabelle wasn’t going to go with the flow and do what everyone else was telling her to do then she definitely shouldn’t look within herself and see what she truly wanted.
Isabelle blinked a few times, confused by her own train of thought. Exactly what in the hell had she been thinking, again?
“Come on, Isabelle,” said the Overlord. “Don’t you want to go home? Go ahead. Kneel. I’ll send you the dissolution request. Then, once you accept, I can remove your system permanently and send you back to where you came from. And really, isn’t that want we all want?”
[The Overlord failed a persuasion attempt against you]
Isabelle suddenly felt freed from the confusing yet compelling rhetoric of the Overlord.
“Oh, thank the gods,” said Tahsi.
“Fuck you, ‘the Overlord,’” said Isabelle. “And fuck your fucking dissolution request. Kneel before you? Why don’t you take your fucking request and shove it up your asshole?”
Maviel snorted with laughter.
“Hey!” the Overlord said to Maviel. “What the hell was that? Support me! I’m you’re Overlord!”
“Yes, darling,” said Maviel with a roll of her eyes.
“And you!” The Overlord pointed a finger at Isabelle. “You dare defy the Overlord? There will be consequences for this!” The ground shook as purple electricity coursed around the Overlord’s muscular form. “Dire consequences!” His voice was ten times deeper. “I was going to give you freedom! I was going to give you what you really want! And you tell me to shove my kind offering up my own ass? That’s the rudest, most disrespectful language anyone has directed at me since I reincarnated here over two hundred years ago!”
Isabelle shrugged.
[Error: You cannot level up while in combat mode]
Well, shit. Isabelle had been wondering when she’d get to level up. It was nice to know that if the Overlord didn’t kill her she’d get to increase her stats a little.
“Your insolence disugsts me!” said the Overlord. Cracks shot through the ground. The electricity swriling around his body started to tingle and grow larger.
“Deep breaths, dear,” said Maviel. “Take deep breaths. Breathe.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, woman!” the Overlord screamed at Maviel. The veins under his skin popped out to an extreme degree. “I’ll breathe as shallowly as I want to, gods damnit!”
Isabelle held back a chuckle. The Overlord seemed to have a pretty short fuse.
The Overlord started breathing deeply, despite his own protestations, and soon the purple electricity faded and tamed itself. The ground quakes shifted to but a light rumble. The Overlord regarded Isabelle. “Listen. I’m going to give you one more chance to go back to your old world, your old life. Honestly, it fucking disgusts me that you wouldn’t even consider it! I’m offering you a golden ticket! I mean, by the gods, if you don’t believe me just look at this!” The Overlord equipped a large, clear orb. “Look into this orb, Isabelle, and see the world you could return to.”
Isabelle felt suspicious. Why the hell should she listen to the Overlord? Of course, she wasn’t about to ask him, because if she did he’d doubtlessly try and use his speechcraft against her. However, maybe Isabelle could check whether the orb was a trap with her system. Isabelle thought, ‘Check Overlord Orb Trap.’
[…]
[Error: your wis+int check failed]
Shit. There was no way to know. Isabelle took one cautious step forward, still feeling compelled to look inside. Maybe the Overlord already had succeeded in a persuasion attempt against her. Either way, Isabelle looked into the orb.
At first, it was crystal clear, but the more Isabelle focused the cloudier and more opaque the orb became. Then, small details started to form. Isabelle could see a street coming into view. A city street. It was morning. All the buildings were on fire. What? All the buildings were on fire? Worse still, the more Isabelle focused the more she noticed that there were half-eaten human corpses littering the asphalt.
“What the fuck?” said Isabelle.
“See your old home,” said the Overlord. “Your true home. Just one dissolution request, one kneel, and I can make your life of torment in this bizarre world all go away. I can send you to where you belong and out of this mess of dragons and magic. Just imagine it. No system, no worries, no conflict other than whatever minor minutia you used to deal with back in your past life.”
“Uh, what are you talking about, ‘the Overlord?’” said Isabelle. “I don’t see a peaceful world in the orb. I mean, okay, my old world wasn’t necessarily all peaceful, in fact it was full of war and strife, but I was lucky enough to be born somewhere peaceful. However, what I’m seeing in the orb is anything but peaceful, ‘the Overlord,’ and it doesn’t really make me want to go back, either.”
“Stop calling me ‘the Overlord’ like that!” said the Overlord. “Just call me Overlord. Because that’s what I am! The Overlord!”
“Okay, whatever,” said Isabelle. “Still, what’s up with the orb?”
“Nothing’s up with it!” said the Overlord. “This is your old world. I swear it’s the fucking truth! Why would I show you something terrible and unconvincing? Gods damn it, I’m trying to entice you, not push you away from the idea altogether!”
Isabelle figured that was convincing enough of a statement, though she still wasn’t certain whether the Overlord was using speechcraft against her in the moment or not. Still, she looked back into the orb.
Inside the orb, there were now monsters runing around. They were huge, and scaly, and they almost looked like giant walking mouths spewing blood and acid everywhere. Worse still, as the orb focused further on the scene, Isabelle could see that some nearby star had started exploding in the sky into a supernova, and that it was actually warping Earth’s atmosphere. There also looked like there were some zombies walking around here and there, but Isabelle had had her fill of looking in that orb at that point so instead she backed way from the Overlord in shock.
“So, um, was all that supposed to convince me of something?” asked Isabelle. “Obviously this whole thing is a joke. Did you just, what, show me a vision of a portal to hell or something?”
“Hell?” the Overlord said. He looked at the orb and tapped it a few times. “No, no, it’s not visualizing hell right now. It’s visualizing your old world, one hundred percent.”
Isabelle looked over to Tahsi. “Is he lying? Can you tell?”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” said Tahsi. “Though I must admit, hanging upside down this long is making me feel lightheaded and probably also impairing my judgement.”
Isabelle started laughing.
“What?” asked the Overlord. “What’s so funny?”
“I mean—” said Isabelle, “—from looking in that orb, it seems like I reincarnated here essentially right at the start of a literal apocalypse in my old world.” She looked at the Overlord. “So, uh, I think I’m good on the whole ‘dissolution request’ thing or whatever.”
“Very well,” said the Overlord. Then, he screamed. He screamed so loud that the world around them shook, so loud that Frimri turned a large dragon eye and looked at him with disdain.
Maviel sighed, released the Overlord’s leg from her grasp, and crawled away from him with dejection.
Isabelle watched as the purple electricity coiled and grew around the Overlord, as his veins popped out again, as his muscles contracted and then engorged and as a large purple orb of energy grew around his body. He floated into the air.
“If you will not kneel before the Overlord by choice—” said the Overlord in a voice that sounded like twenty evil men speaking at once, “—then you will kneel by force!”
Tahsi dropped to the ground.
[Tahsi -1 hp]
“Oof!” said Tahsi. “That sucked.”
Isabelle figured now was as good a time as ever to try and cast a minor illusion on the Overlord. So, she thought, ‘Cast Minor Illusion’ and pointed at him.
[Mana 95%]
[‘The Overlord’ resisted ‘Minor Illusion’]
The pink flash of halo fizzled around the Overlord, then disappeared.
“Nice try, player!” said the Overlord. “But I’m the Overlord! Sure, a minor illusion could work on Maviel, but did you really think I would be so foolish as to open myself up to a weakness in such ways? I’m resistant to so many things that it’s patently absurd! Go ahead, try any weak little spell you have in your arsenal. See if your low level magic can do anything to me at all, Isabelle!”
Isabelle felt a little nervous. He had to be wrong, it had to be a bluff. She raised her hand and thought, ‘Cast Flame Blast’ and powered it up.
[Mana 66%]
Fire danced out of her hand and snaked its way up to the Overlord, but it fizzled and faded the moment it hit his body.
[‘The Overlord’ resisted ‘Flame Blast’]
“Told you so,” said the Overlord.
“Wow,” said Tahsi. “He must have some good stats, Isabelle.”
“Tahsi!” said Isabelle. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“I’m just saying!” said Tahsi. He took a chomp of bread. “The Overlord sure does have us beat. I probably ought to have joined his party, but then again, it’s a very exclusive party, the Overlord’s is. He probably wouldn’t want a wimpy little kobold like me in his party.”
“Tahsi, what the hell are you saying?” asked Isabelle.
“I’m saying what I feel!” said Tahsi.
“The wimpy kobold is right, Isabelle,” said the Overlord. “And, now that I’ve let you have your fun and attack me, I think it’s damn near time for my turn!” The Overlord equipped a large, black hammer and raised it into the air. All the electricity and power that had been swirling around him congealed into it, making the weapon glow greatly. The Overlord floated up to Isabelle and swung his hammer down on her. It was only at this moment that Isabelle realized she couldn’t move a muscle.