Chương 134: The Overlord of Crime (18)

Simon knew at that very moment that this reign had come to an end. His ancestor had written his death sentence with his followers' corpses, whose souls had been snuffed out in an instant. Part of Simon would have loved to say it got easier as the reigns went on, that the pain diminished with each cycle of time, but it didn't. The sight of Eole's and Cassandra's lifeless bodies on the ground filled him with anguish and hatred, perhaps as much as Elios Magnos' utter lack of empathy for the life of others.

"You clearly know who I am, so I assume you expected me to clean up your mess somehow," his ancestor said, a hint of annoyance breaking through his cavernous rattle of a voice.

"What could have possibly made you think interrupting my meditation was a good idea?" Simon tried to take a breath, but he only inhaled dust and cold. Yes, part of him knew such a move was probably bound to backfire, but he had hoped the lich would either stay in his Dungeon or focus on massacring the Cobweb rather than track down his descendant.

Simon guessed he had interrogated Chrom Cruak to learn that Simon had become the Overlord and revealed the Scorpion's location to the crime ring, at which point he put two and two together. Other Overlords might have tried to use him the same way. It was a lesson he would not forget. Some beasts weren't worth being roused.

"Truth be told, it was my idea of a prank," Simon admitted.

"I hope you savored it then, because I will need to give you a sharp lesson about bothering your elders to ensure that you never do it again. Since you still bother with weaklings, I will begin by killing everyone you ever interacted with in front of your eyes…" The ancient lich glanced at Belzemine with cold apathy.

"Starting with that pathetic false savior." Simon didn't know what was scarier: the fact that Elios Magnos believed that he could follow through with his threat without a shadow of a doubt, or the idea that he would force his descendant to live through it all. Did he have a way to immobilize Simon in spite of his immunities, keeping him trapped in place as he watched Belzemine, Lauriane, Anna, and so many others perish? Even death would be a mercy by the end of it all.

"There is still time," Asterion whispered in Simon's head.

"To pull the wool from our eyes." Yes, there was. A minute to take the ultimate risk, in order to claim the ultimate prize; an act of such grandiosity only the greatest and most daring of Overlords would dare attempt it. Simon's index finger reached out to the Minotaur crystal.

"What are you trying to do with that piece of glass stuck on your head?" Elios asked with a hint of curiosity and disdain.

"Merge with it?"

"Opening my third eye," Simon replied bluntly.

"If so, then you are a fool unworthy of your throne. Even if it were possible, this eye of light will only blind you with lies." Venomous hatred oozed from that last word.

"Why use a miasma crystal for–""As a beacon," Simon replied as he cast the dice, " Devour Crestone." Time slowed down to a crawl, and then came to a halt after he uttered those words, dust hanging in the air and all movement coming to an end. All of existence held its breath, as if struggling to register what had just happened. The world ceased to blur at the edges in this impossible moment right before the fatal collapse.

And then the serpent bit its own tail as the Overlord consumed a fragment of his own Crestone. A wave coursed through space and time, rippling across the very fabric of reality. A veritable ocean of miasma poured out of Asterion's crystal in a cataclysmic flood. It washed away everything in its path, from Belzemine to the Halls of the Minotaur and the Stone Muse alike. All were consumed by darkness, their remains swallowed by hungry shadows…

all but Elios Magnos, who raised a purple barrier to protect himself from the chaos.

"An Overlord trying to devour his own Crestone… a serpent eating its own tail," Elios Magnos mused, his anger now replaced with curiosity.

"Not even young Balzam dared to try that…" And Simon quickly understood why. He could no longer move, his body frozen in a loop. His magic coursed from his finger to his arm, his chest, his head, and then back into the crystal in a cycle without end. The vile sorcery coursed through his veins and nerves, changing them, quickening them, transforming them! More and more miasma poured out of Asterion's crystal, more than the sea which had cursed the Darkwood, more than what any human evil could unleash.

"Beyond," he heard Asterion shout in his head, uncaring of the strain his crystal suffered from.

"The truth awaits beyond zero and infinity!" The miasma storm only intensified, splitting the world in half. Elios Magnos divided in front of him, half of him a grinning lich, the other a book of serpent scales bound by human eyes, its page flipping into infinity.

"You wish to open an eye of darkness, not of light," Elios said, a grim cackle coming from beneath his hood.

"How daring… how new." Runes and phantom words swirled around the lich, giving order and structure to the torrent of miasma.

"Do you see them yet? The echoes and the remnants?" Yes, Simon saw. He saw himself driving a sword of light through his father's heart on a battlefield, crushing the flag of Endymion under his Paladin boot. He saw himself embracing a woman he had once called mother when he was a child, and who had lived to see him become a man. He saw himself through a woman who was both a stranger and a sister to him, gazing at his own reflection across time.

Memories that never were mixed and blurred with flashes of his morning star bashing in Frea's skull, of his hand caressing Anna's cheek and Remedia's lips, of dragonfire and blinding light! Too… too much… it was too much all at once…

"Focus," Elios said sharply, his voice the ruffling sound of pages flipping into infinity. His previous enmity was all but forgotten, replaced with a savant's eagerness to test out a new theory.

"No price is too great for truth and knowledge! Let your curiosity guide you into the darkest places! This is our way!"

"Keep going, child," Asterion encouraged him,"Into the Abyss we go, into the deepest of chasms!" And they continued to see, to gaze past his own existence and this reign beyond the veil of time. A night pitch black enough to devour the stars consumed this universe whole, and into the jaws of eternity they fell. But even there, there were screams. They fell into a vortex of screaming souls and spirits, of people flickering between life and death, blissful life and eternal damnation.

They fell with him into a monstrous spiral of fractured reality. Simon saw flashes and hints of old worlds, of dozens of Frightwalls floating in the void alongside pieces of continental crust and floating seas drifting downward into a vortex of broken physics; all towards a dark point at the very bottom of existence. Was this… Hell?

"No," Asterion replied, a hint of fear in his voice.

"It's something else… something crueler…"

"Do you see it now?" Elios Magnos asked, his laughter rising even as the darkness of time consumed him too.

"The triumph of our will?!" The Abyss welcomed them past the spiral and into its bottomless chasm, into the depths of Frightwall where the Crimson Throne welcomed him in its vile embrace, with a new Title to bestow upon his head. This is the Eighteenth of your Hundred Reigns. You have earned the Title of Simon the Devious. The Devious: You have outwitted and outplayed all those who thought they could control you. Other people do not receive System notifications when you cast mind-affecting effects on them.

But they didn't stop. Simon continued to stare into the dark, past the throne, past the veil of time. New memories flowed into his mind, great deeds of evil immortalized into the Abyss, ancient monuments of cruelty carved into the very heart of darkness… If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. His father's voice rang out into the darkness, mighty and imperious, his hand raised to the sky for a million eyes to see.

"Bend your knees or lose your heads, for order has finally come to your land! Abandon your delusions of freedom, and surrender your will to House Magnos… for I am the Overlord, and fear is my law!" A dragon's roar drowned out his father's voice, a great winged shadow casting the burning ruins of Marthrone into darkness.

"There is no need to divide this world's treasures among fools!" the beast thundered, his mouth a volcano.

"My existence alone is sufficient! I shall consume all life in this world until all is mine, mine alone! Now and forever, there is only Gargauth!" And then came that arena, spilled with the blood of the innocent, where an elven child with red hair cried and cowered before a wicked snake oozing shadows and malice.

"Why…" Belzemine whispered in despair.

"Why would you do such a horrible thing?" And the serpent smiled.

"Because the thought that someone, somewhere, could live happily and free of fear… is unbearable to me."

"This…" Asterion's voice had grown eerily quiet and filled with dread.

"This is a curse…" And then Simon saw them, enthroned in the dark. Once again his soul found himself in that void, floating in front of the Crimson Throne… except there were now three of them, and each had an occupant. On Simon's right was the ghost of his father, Balzam Magnos, as terrible and wicked as he had been in life, slouching in the Overlord armor his child had inherited.

His outfit looked so similar to that of his son that they could have been mistaken for one another, were it not for the greatsword he had so loved and the pale grey eyes looking down on his son with a mix of parental pride and contempt through the helmet's slits. Simon knew it was him, the real Third Overlord and not some illusion. No mirage could be so vivid as to perfectly capture that glare. On his left was a great black dragon that was the spitting image of Vouivre at first glance…

except so much larger, so impossibly bigger, that his daughter looked like a child in comparison. The Overlord armor had adapted to his draconic morphology, turning his scales to black steel, his joints into rubies gleaming with hellfire, his face into a horned helmet, and his claws into swords. His golden eyes radiated a seething contempt for all life except his own that not even his children combined could match. And at the center…

"Welcome, Simon," the figure said with a melodious voice that was both male and female, with a snakelike hiss mixed in.

"I am surprised you can see us." At the center sat a living shadow. Their outfit was the most androgynous of the lot, more black robes reddened by all the blood soaking them than an armor outside of the gauntlets and a helmet more akin to a metal, mouthless mask bearing a crown of serpent fangs. A crimson snake lovingly coiled around the figure, but when Simon looked closer, it seemed to flow out from beneath their clothes rather than being a separate entity.

It finally hit Simon why Louis never received a level from killing his father, and why Balzam Magnos hadn't even considered lichdom or similar forms of undeath. Simon had already suspected the truth when he sensed his father's presence in the Crimson Throne, but the truth was laid bare right in front of him. An Overlord's soul never got off their throne, even in death. The dragon's head snapped to behind Simon.

"What is this?" Gargauth asked, his voice akin to crackling fire.

"An intruder?" Simon's soul looked up to see a great miasma shadow floating above him; a great mass of miasma shaped like a winged minotaur of immense size. The crystal between its horns had begun to disintegrate, but its crimson eyes continued to glare at the dead Overlords with malevolence. Asterion. Balzam grunted in contempt.

"You've brought him here, my fool of a son?"

"This is unexpected." The serpent-bearer—whom Simon had already guessed the identity of—caressed their snake's head as they spoke.

"Greetings, brother. I commend your resilience for reaching us, and your sacrifice in empowering our successor."

"You…" Asterion's voice dripped with pure, undiluted, absolute disgust, his eyes glaring at the serpent Overlord with all of his undying hatred.

"The sin you and that lich have committed is beyond words, Mardok. You two alone deserve to be called demons."

"I have no time nor desire to waste words upon you, Asterion," Mardok replied contemptuously.

"The darkness here consumes even shadows like yourself. Ere long, you will bother us no more."

"My existence stretches across infinity!" the Minotaur snarled back, his claw pointing at Mardok.

"One of them will see the truth when great Abraxas lifts the veil of our eyes! He will see your prison's walls and shatter them!"

"And he will fail. This universe only needs one symbol of evil." Overlord Mardok waved their hand with aristocratic disdain.

"Begone from our sight."

"Simon, you must find me!" Asterion shouted at him, his voice brimming with despair.

"You find my rem–" The void swallowed him whole in an instant, leaving only darkness and silence.

"Do not mind him," Mardok said, "He and the others had their chance. The Overlord alone deserves to rule, and your turn has come." Simon attempted to open his mouth to ask why, how, when… but all of his soul's questions were silenced by the endless Dark. His voice failed to echo into the Abyss, to his hosts' confusion.

"Is he broken?" Gargauth asked, as if Simon were an object.

"He is mute."

"It's too soon," Balzam replied coldly.

"He hasn't even managed to kill his own siblings as I instructed him to… and no, Thalas does not count. He was a lesson in abstinence."

"I do not think he will be able to see us again for a very long time, either. To awaken as a Dark Visionary is one thing, to master the gift is another." Mardok shifted on their throne.

"Listen carefully, Overlord Simon." Simon stared up at the ancient evil, the First Overlord and creator of the Crimson Throne.

"A Dark Visionary like you should be able to enslave and corrupt Eidolons now, and interact with the reigns in ways none of us could have before you," Mardok explained calmly, their serpent staring at Gargauth.

"Find our successor's hoard and Abyssal Chronicle. Overlord Gargauth studied those subjects extensively. You should find wise advice on your path to power." Gargauth saw red, his fangs—each taller and thicker than any man—on full display.

"Don't you dare, you vermin," he roared with eyes gleaming with burning greed.

"It is mine, mine, mine! Not yours, not my spawn's, mine!"

"As you can see, death has not improved Overlord Gargauth's disposition," Mardok mused as they clasped their hands.

"The new reign is about to begin. What Title shall we bestow upon our successor?"

"The Wasteful," Gargauth said immediately.

"A waste of a reign."

"The Devourer," Balzam replied, his eyes full of contempt.

"My bastard is too bold by half not to try devouring another crystal, and another might succeed where the bull failed. Losing two reigns on this ritual was already enough of a blow."

"My vote goes to the Devourer as well." Mardok nodded to themselves.

"Two against one." Their 'agreement' manifested in the form of a notification, right in front of Simon's eyes. This is the Nineteenth of your Hundred Reigns. You have earned the Title of Simon the Devourer. The Devourer: Your inner darkness devours even the stars. Devouring a Zodiac Crystal will no longer destabilize your Class, though doing so while their constellation shines in the sky will grant you a shard of their power. A vote.

There was something darkly ironic about the fact that the past Overlords, living embodiments of absolute despotism, decided on their successor's Titles through a majority vote. Even then, the benefit felt like a twisted joke; another encouragement to risk his life against the Zodiac Fiends at full power for another morsel of strength. Simon wondered which of those three, undying bastards had sponsored each of his previous Titles. They see everything, Simon realized.

That was why he had seen parts of his predecessors when the Mana Sword struck him. They're always with me, every cursed step of the way, the audience of my life.

"The time has come for us to bid you goodbye, Overlord Simon. I foresee we will meet again many reigns from now, once your gifts have sharpened." Mardok stroked their metal mask.

"By the way, about what I did to Belzemine… please tell her…" Their serpent flashed a ghastly, malicious grin.

"That I would give everything to do it all over again."

"I still can't believe you weren't man enough to kill that elf off yet," Balzam Magnos told his son before imparting one final piece of fatherly advice.

"Have at least the decency of raping her once. It will yield more experience, and she will thank you for it. I know, I checked." Gargauth's farewell was the curtest.

"I hope my spawn eats you alive again." The march of time wrenched Simon's soul out of the Abyss, and returned him to the past. He awoke again in his bed, back in Frightwall. The rush of experience from becoming a Dark Visionary, and the pleasure that followed, didn't even begin to make up for the skull-splitting pain he suffered from. Level 60 Overlord Perk: Miasmic Archmage VI (Passive): You can learn and cast spells up to Tier VI, but only those fueled by miasma.

Simon forced himself to his feet, still holding his head and struggling against the nausea. He had no third eye in the middle of his face, none that the naked eye could see at least… but when he put his Overlord armor on, he immediately noticed a slight change in the helmet: a tiny black crystal in the middle of his crown, right in the middle of the forehead. An onyx stone of an eye growing from his raw miasma. What other truths would it reveal over time?

Simon didn't particularly notice a sharper sight when it came to mana in the air, but as Elios Magnos said, a Dark Visionary was something unheard of. Simon had no predecessor who could show him the path, no way to fully understand his new gifts except through research and experimentation. And he had so much to process beyond that… the Cobweb's true nature, the fact his cursed father and his fellow Overlords were still around, even as ghosts stuck on their thrones, and more than that…

whatever truth about the reigns had horrified an archdemon enough to condemn his own brethren.

"This… This is a curse…" Asterion had said, before encouraging Simon to find him again.

"One of them will see the truth when great Abraxas lifts the veil of our eyes! He will see your prison's walls and shatter them!" Did he suggest his newest incarnation would either remember past reigns or understand their nature once brought to full power during the Zodiac Parade? Was it worth confronting the Minotaur then, in spite of the risks? And if the reigns were all a curse, then who was its victim? Simon, or everyone else? End of Act I