Chapter 1: The Fourth Overlord (1) | The Hundred Reigns
It was three in the morning when Simon learned that his royal father had been murdered, to everyone's relief.
Simon had been dreaming of it for a very, very long time now. Most of the time, he saw his father pass away in his sleep with a beer mug in hand. Sometimes, it involved poison, and at others, a fall from a tower. Often, it was Simon himself who pushed his father down, though he could never remember why. He must have dreamed of the Overlord's death a hundred times now, in a hundred different ways.
Yet this particular dream ended with a message; a notification flaring in the darkness of unconsciousness, written in blood on a dark canvas on which glowed the number 100.
You have unlocked a Class.
This is the first of your hundred reigns.
What the…
The dream ended there, with the feeling of a strong grip jolting him awake.
Simon had been sleeping soundly when his older half-sister, Lauriane, woke him up by shaking him so hard he fell off onto the pile of books he always kept near his bed. Her crimson eyes seemed to gleam in the dark, and an armored knight shadowed her.
"Put on your pants and come with me," she ordered with a tone that brooked no disobedience. Although she had come dressed in her purple and golden military uniform, her usual blonde bun was hastily made and unkempt. She must have woken up recently. "We don't have much time."
"What's going on?" Simon remembered asking while still half-asleep. Something hovered at the edge of his vision, a blurry stain in his eye. Was it dust?
"This is an emergency," his half-sister said, and Simon knew the truth the moment he saw the grave look on her fair face. There was only one kind of disaster that would shake Lauriane the Spellblade and warrant a royal bastard's presence. "The thing you've been having nightmares about has happened."
Simon's heart skipped a beat in his chest. "Is Father–"
"Yes."
Well fuck.
This had to happen now of all times, right before he was to attend the Imperial Military Academy too, when he could finally leave this vipers' den of a palace with his head still on his shoulders. His dreams of becoming an adventurer and retiring into peaceful obscurity had just gone down the drain.
Simon barely had time to put on a shirt and pants before Lauriane's knight all but dragged him outside his room. The night staff watched the imperial children walk with fish-pale faces and dropped their eyes. It seemed the news had already begun to spread.
"How long until the civil war starts?" Simon asked gloomily. "I would bet on this afternoon."
"This is no joking matter," Lauriane chided him as they passed through the Trophy Gallery on their way to the imperial apartments. Long lines of statues—enemies of the state, which their father kept petrified to set an example to all visitors—gazed at them from atop red marble pedestals, their faces frozen in horror. "We will need to act quickly, for whichever heir the Crimson Throne selects."
Simon nodded carefully. Part of him had prepared in anticipation for this day. Everyone assumed he would side with Louis and Lauriane's faction, largely because the other potential heir, Thalas, was a dick who wanted him dead. If Louis was selected as the new emperor, then Simon would swear allegiance to him and help secure the transition of power.
If it was Thalas… well, he would either have to grab a sword to dearly defend his life or flee the palace within the hour.
They walked through near-empty corridors adorned with portraits of the castle's previous rulers on their way to the emperor's apartments. Simon had never seen them from within—that honor was usually reserved for his father's mistresses—and they were already too crowded for him to enjoy the decorations.
Everyone important was already there: Crown Prince Louis, High Confessor Mastemo of the Church of Light, that witch of an empress Euphemia, her asshole son Thalas himself, head physician Agnes Firewand, all the ministers, and most of the imperial generals. They were so densely packed around the emperor's bed that Simon barely managed to catch a glimpse of it.
He expected to see his father resting peacefully, having passed away in his sleep after one last drunken night of revelry.
Instead, he found the Third Overlord drenched in his own blood.
Emperor Balzam was an impressive figure, even in death. He had been a titan of a man with sprawling muscles bearing the scars of dragon claws, but now his chest sported a slashing gash stretching from his shoulder to navel, and his barbarian white hair had turned crimson from the blood and viscera staining it.
Moreover, there was another naked corpse in the bed; that of a pretty human woman whose throat had been slit. Simon immediately recognized her as one of his father's concubines. Her state left no doubt about what happened.
Emperor Balzam had been assassinated.
That shook Simon to his core. He knew it was inevitable that the old geezer would die one day—he had been getting on in his years in spite of life-extending magic—but to be murdered? Him? The great conqueror who had stepped over the Dragonlord's corpse to seize the Crimson Throne and nearly doubled the Empire's size in less than two decades?
"What an abomination…" High Confessor Mastemo complained from behind his faceless, mirror mask. "What barbarian could have done something so awful?"
"Who even had the power to kill His Majesty?" someone asked in the crowd, echoing Simon's own concerns. "His Majesty was the highest-level person in the land with the strongest Class! I've seen blades shatter against his naked skin!"
"The one that slew him had abnormal magical properties," said Agnes Firewand. The elven slave-healer's hand glowed with light as they passed over the fallen emperor's injuries. "I am not certain I can track down its source."
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"This is a disaster!" shouted some imperial general in plate armor. "The beastmen are barking at our doors, the rebels plot their return beyond the Dragonsea, and monster attacks are on the rise! His Majesty's demise leaves us vulnerable, and now we have a kingslayer on the loose?!"
"The poor girl," Simon muttered as he glanced at his father's late mistress. Her final expression had been one of utter terror. She only had the bad luck of being in the emperor's bed at the wrong time, and nobody else even paid her any attention.
It astonished Simon how little he cared for his father's death in comparison. He had never been especially close to the emperor and only interacted with him twice; the first time when his knights took him from his crying mother to bring him to the palace, and when he prevented the empress from executing him after he punched her son Thalas during an exercise. Emperor Balzam preferred the company of his mistresses and ministers to that of his family, even his own wife and children.
In fact, only Lauriane and a handful of ministers appeared to mourn him in the crowd. The empress' golden eyes assessed her husband's corpse with cold calculation, and the imperial princes and princesses were already exchanging glares.
It was only a matter of time before the knives came out of their sheaths.
Simon had no intention of being caught in the crossfire. He had only survived this den of vipers for so long by keeping his head down and sticking to the library. He had strived to stay as invisible as possible, short of casting the actual spell. Now that he had reached twenty years old, he had been set to study at the Imperial Military Academy, earn himself a Class, and then hopefully start a career as an adventurer. This would have let him avoid all the drama, the back alley assassinations, and having to double-check each of his drinks for signs of poison.
But he would have to survive until then, so the first thing he did was count the number of guards in the room and their loyalty. The empress had come with her personal guard, and Louis with his own, but His Eminence Mastemo's four templars would likely side with the former. Father's generals could swing either way, and Firewand couldn't use offensive magic without triggering her slave crest. And of course, all the important people present wielded powerful Classes of their own.
All in all, the sides in attendance were relatively evenly-matched, and whoever could sway the generals first by accusing the other side of murdering the emperor would likely gain the advantage.
Seeing this, Crown Prince Louis—a tall and regal, red-haired man with sharp grey eyes who was the spitting image of his father at a younger age—opened hostilities with a barb. "You wouldn't happen to know how the assassin sneaked into father's chambers undetected, stepmother?"
The empress, great Saintess of the Church of Light, glared at the blatant accusation. "Your father and I have slept apart for years now, boy."
"Louis," Lauriane whispered into her brother's ear. She was always the more careful of the two. "Now is not the time to–"
"It is no wonder why," the crown-prince replied mockingly, ignoring his sister's plea. "Father would have died of fright much earlier otherwise."
"Your Grace!" one of the ministers protested as various factions began to reach for their swords. "Please calm down–"
Simon was about to bolt for the door before the bloodbath started when a puff of smoke erupted near the imperial bed, startling everyone.
The Keeper of the Throne had appeared.
The creature showed up in the form of a stretched, vaguely humanoid shape composed of paperwork, floating pages, and stitched leather. A glowing, purple crystal served as its singular eye.
The Keeper of the Throne was no mortal creature. It was a spirit bound to the Crimson Throne of Endymion, a neutral shade tasked with fulfilling the Emperor's wishes and announcing his decrees. In practice, it mostly appeared to serve as a crier for new imperial decrees, to transfer the Overlord Class to its new holder, and to carry its master's messages.
And what would you know, it carried a scroll in its inky fingers.
"I come to you bearing the late Emperor's testament," it said with a cold, genderless voice akin to whispering pages.
"A testament?!" Crown Prince Louis asked in surprise as whispers spread across the crowd. He immediately turned his gaze towards the empress. "What did you do, witch?!"
"Nothing." The empress clenched her jaw in what appeared to be genuine shock. "I wasn't informed."
She wasn't? Simon quickly glanced at the crowd and checked everyone's expression. They all seemed confused and taken aback, from the highest-ranked general to the emperor's own children.
"You knew?" Simon whispered to Lauriane.
"No, of course not." Lauriane squinted at the Keeper. "Did Father go behind all of our backs?"
The Keeper ignored everyone and unfurled the scroll. All voices fell into a deep and heavy silence when they began to read the contents.
"This is the will and word of Overlord Balzam Magnos, Emperor of Endymion, Lord of the Demon Castle and the Crimson Throne, the Dragonslayer, Conqueror of the west and the east, High King of all that he sees, chosen of the Church of the Light; I do hereby bequeath my Class, throne, and titles to my chosen heir."
Everyone held their breath. Although Father had shown no particular interest in any of his children while alive, Simon could only think of two options: either Crown Prince Louis, his eldest born from his first marriage, or the empress' better son Thalas, in whom had the blood of both an emperor and a saintess. The prince and the empress' parties had been the two main factions afoot in the palace for years, and only the emperor's neutrality kept their ambitions in check.
I've got to leave now, Simon thought as he pushed a few people on his way to the door. Whoever received the Keeper's blessing would inherit the powerful Overlord Class, but also find themselves locked in a room with the other faction's leader. Even Lauriane kept her hand on her blade, ready to draw it to either defend her brother Louis or strike down Thalas. This will end in a fight.
"The transfer has already been completed," the Keeper concluded upon rolling up the paper. "A new Overlord walks among us."
A tense silence followed, so thick Simon froze on the threshold.
Something's wrong. The Keeper hadn't named the heir in the testament, yet the various imperial factions stared at each other without a word. It would have been easy for Louis or Thalas to demonstrate their father's favor. All they had to do was activate the Overlord Class and transform to assert their authority over them all.
Yet neither of them moved. They simply glared at each other with a mix of spite and confusion.
Neither of them have been chosen. That was… impossible. Simon simply couldn't imagine why his Father wouldn't name one of those two. Certainly, no one else could match their support, besides maybe Lauriane. Simon glanced at his half-sister to find her equally uneasy. Could Father have chosen Dassein then? But he's on the other side of the Empire, right, and never cared for the crown, so why pick him?
Unless…
A shiver traveled down Simon's spine as he focused on the strange spot at the edge of his vision. It hadn't disappeared since he woke up, and now that he focused more on it, it sharpened into the icon of a crown.
He continued to focus on it until it expanded into a pale blue screen.
Simon had only seen a Class notification a handful of times in his life, when his half-siblings deigned to make their own visible. He had envied them and the power they represented, but as he read the first lines of his own, his heart sank in his chest.
You have unlocked the Overlord Class.
Overlord: The great King of Terror sitting on the Crimson Throne, whose name all will fear and whose timeless reign shall never end.
Strength S, Vitality B, Agility D, Perception C, Magic S, Intelligence C, Charisma A, Luck B.
Innate Perk: Curse of the Hundred Reigns (passive): You are bound to the Crimson Throne for a hundred reigns, and shall gain a Title based on each one.
Innate Perk: Indomitable Crown (Passive): You are immune to mind-affecting effects, and your mind cannot be read.
Innate Perk: Abyssal Retainer (Passive): You may command the Keeper of the Throne.
Level 1 Perk: Warmonger 1 (passive): Can wield all weapons with medium proficiency (x1.5 damage).
Their Father was indeed worthy of his title of Balzam the Cruel.
He had played one last joke on his empire on his way out, and nobody was laughing.