Simon went straight for the kill.
With his magic still sharply debuffed from the song, he sprinted across the stage to reach his foe, only for his eyes to catch movement from above his head. He barely had time to look up and raise his morning star to intercept a sword falling onto him.
A bizarre, knightly puppet of wood and flayed human skin had fallen onto the stage. Pushing eight feet tall, it had buttons in the place of eyes, stitched lips, and needles holding its joints together. It might have been a human man once, a fallen knight reanimated through foul craftsmanship, yet the most striking part was its all-too-familiar armor. Simon could tell it was a metallic mimicry of a true Class outfit, but he had immediately recognized whom it belonged to.
The Paladin.
“The wonderful thing about corpse puppets is that they still retain some of the abilities they had in life,” Bert said, near-invisible wires flickering out from his claws to the fake Paladin, “Even their Perks.”
The puppet Paladin raised a greatsword shining with very real holy light, and then brought it down on Simon.
Although his magic had been diminished, Simon’s preexisting buffs remained fully in effect. He parried the blow with Energumen-enhanced strength, his immense power nearly sending the puppet off its feet. Bert quickly pivoted it in midair, his stuffed doll jerking in an unnatural motion that let it regain its footing and counterattack. It always moved to stand in between its foe and its creator to bar Simon’s way.
Sensing the magic debuff lifting, Simon attempted to cast a blast of Hellfire and burn the doll to cinders, only for that cursed song to echo out again. His spell fizzled out into mere embers sparkling from his fingers, which forced him to deflect a beheading slice with his morning star. He quickly glanced at the piano.
Its keys were moving on their own.
“By the way, the piano is a music box,” Bert mused as he waved his hands, his puppet unleashing an aggressive flurry of blows that briefly forced Simon on the defensive. “It can play by itself.”
“A Puppeteer,” Simon realized upon identifying Bert’s Class, a Vassal of the Crafter focusing on controlling and empowering tethered constructs. “A doll playing Puppeteer. Cute.”
“We’re all mariotes on the stage of life, Lord Magnos,” Bert mused as magic coursed through his strings. “The question is, which role are you playing?”
Magic coursed through the puppet’s body, and its movements suddenly quickened as if under the Haste buff. Its sword slices became a blur, one slipping past Simon’s guard and striking him in the chest. The holy light seared his armor and drew a grunt of pain from him.
Supereffective damage!
The blow would have hit as hard as Alphonse’s without his Shadowshield to soften it, and the puppet enjoyed a real Paladin’s speed advantage over Simon too. Moreover, Bert’s puppeteering allowed his mariote to react and move in unnatural ways to better dodge incoming attacks.
But all Crafter Vassal Classes shared the same weakness…
“Are you the lead?” Bert taunted him. “Or the fool?”
“I’m neither,” Simon replied as he switched his current ring for his Strength for Speed one. “I’m the playwright.”
They were terrible at close combat.
Using his sudden increase in speed to take Bert and his puppet by surprise, Simon sidestepped a vertical slice from the false Paladin and then rushed at the puppeteer himself. Bert proved incredibly quick and leaped out of the way with inhuman agility, but Simon simply swung at another target instead.
He smashed the piano with his morning star in a single blow, its final death note echoing throughout the theater.
Simon’s magic coursed through him once again, much to his relish.
“And now,” he said with glee, casting a Hellfire spell at the fake Paladin rushing his way. “Burn.”
He blasted the puppet and watched it go down in flames within seconds of sustained fire. As it turned out, dry wood burned better than flesh and the puppet lacked Alphonse’s resilience. Only a pile of ash stood between Simon and Bert now.
“He wasn’t that strong of a Paladin,” Simon mused, “To burn so easily in Hell’s flames.”
“Emperor Balzam killed that one,” Bert replied as he raised his hand to the ceiling. “Like father, like son, I suppose.”
“You don’t say,” Simon replied as he raised a finger at the murderous mannequin. “Countdown.”
Simon’s spell struck before Bert managed to lift himself up to the ceiling, but it made no difference. Countdown washed over his enemy like water on a smooth rock.
Damn ailment immunities, Simon cursed as he looked up after his foe. Here he thought it would have worked better than Petrify, since Bert was sure to prepare himself against that due to his current reputation. Ruin won’t do much good against a living puppet either.
The ceiling began to open up with a whirring noise, revealing some sort of storage room above the stage. Rows upon rows of creepy porcelain dolls designed like human children sat on shelves embedded in the walls, staring down at Simon with blank, glassy expressions.
“Good try, but you will find no human frailty to exploit here,” Bert taunted him as he sat at the center of a web of strings. “Shackling Strings.”
Simon immediately felt invisible strings grabbing his arms and legs, even though he saw none. They pulled back at him whenever he moved, constraining his movements and slowing him down.
Agility sharply decreased!
Even switching his Strength for Speed ring for his Ring of Curse Flames to regain his full might didn’t let him shake the invisible strings off. At least the buff from his equipment partly let him compensate enough to keep moving.
“And now,” Bert said, a wave of childlike laughter echoing down from above. The dolls on the shelves floated away from their alcoves as if manipulated by unseen ghosts. “Doll Waltz.”
The porcelain dolls fell down upon Simon like a swarm, knives flashing in their articulated hands.
“Night Raid!” Simon cast, summoning a swarm of his own. Vicious abyssal bats appeared to intercept the dolls, fangs clashing with blades, yet some of the dolls slipped past the blockade. Simon repelled them with a Chaos Wave that smashed them apart and burned others with Hellfire. His limited mobility meant a few managed to cut him, but another Chaos Wave repelled them easily enough.
“Just how many spells can you cast?” Bert commented from above with a hint of annoyance. He must have hoped to prevail through attrition, but Simon incinerated his way through his doll collection without issue. “You don’t even seem winded. It’s not natural.”
“You will find no human frailty to exploit here,” Simon mocked once he had burned the last of the dolls, echoing Bert’s prior comment. “I pity whoever created you. You’re clearly defective.”
To his surprise, that comment actually rattled Bert. “I am not defective, you arrogant creature of flesh and blood!” he snapped with a hint of vicious anger. “Voodoo Bond!”
Miasma envelopped Bert, some kind of illusion transforming him into a near-perfect replica of Simon in his Overlord outfit. Simon wondered if this strange technique would allow Bert to copy some of his abilities, but the Puppeteer instead leaped straight at one of the iron maidens hanging in the air over the stage.
“I was built to kill, and you were born to die!” Bert shouted in midair. “Mystic Box!”
Reality shifted around Simon, and he suddenly found himself teleported inside the iron maiden right as its doors slammed shut on him.
He failed to react in time due to Bert’s Agility debuff, and the steel coffin enveloped him whole. Sharp spikes dipped with holy water pierced through his Overlord armor and kissed the flesh beneath in a flash of excruciating pain.
Supereffective damage! Anti-Heal–
Anti-Heal ailment transferred through Lovestruck!
Simon would have roared in agony if a spike hadn’t lodged itself in his throat. His chest, his limbs, and even his manhood were pierced from all sides, his bones impaled with holy steel. His blood flowed out like a fountain of red that blinded his vision crimson.
“Chaos…” His breath was short, his lungs filling with warm liquid. “Wave!”
He managed to shatter the iron maiden from within with a Chaos Wave, propelling metal shards and blood in all directions and falling onto the stage below, more of pincushion than man. He had so many holes in his body he would have likely bled out on the spot if the Anti-Heal effect had stuck.
Thanking Shabram’s foresight for having him sign a marriage contract with one of her operatives early during the reign, Simon drew on the lifeforce from a handful of branded minions to heal his wounds. The holes in his flesh stopped pouring out blood and began to close. His bones split back in place into place, his lungs breathed in air rather than body fluids, and his manhood recovered. It took him less than a minute to heal.
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So Bert threw himself at another iron maiden.
Unwilling to let him perform that trick again, Simon immediately blasted the steel coffin with Hellfire before Bert could reach it. The blast shattered it to pieces, leaving the Puppeteer with no other iron maidens to use.
“You’re so strong… did you truly inherit your Class mere months ago?” Bert asked in disquiet, his disguise dispelling. “You are too dangerous to let live.”
“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Simon replied as he fired off an Ectoplasmer. Bert dodged the attack with inhuman agility and leaped into one of the hanging mirrors, vanishing through the glass as if it were a portal. Simon shattered its surface with a well-placed Hellthunder, the pieces falling onto the stage.
The other mirrors glowed with otherworldly sorcery, their surfaces brighter than the sun. Beams erupted from them in a rainfall of light that struck Simon from all sides. He raised his arms to protect himself from the impacts, his armor absorbing one attack after another.
Supereffective damage! Supereffective damage!
He can’t have set up all those traps on such short notice, Simon realized as he blasted one mirror apart after another, powering through the pain of the beams by draining some of his lesser thralls to death. He’s been preparing for this confrontation for a very, very long time.
Thankfully, Simon had branded so many beasts, people, thieves, and goblins that he could keep this up for hours, and his Mageling Title ensured he could keep firing spells without running out of miasma anytime soon. He was down to one last mirror when Bert leaped out of its reflection a second before a Hellthunder shattered it. The murderous puppet landed on the stage with no more emergency exits, which allowed Simon to hit him with the Mire spell. Poison seeped into the monster’s wooden frame and began to rot it.
“You should fall to your knees and submit to me while there’s still time, Bert,” Simon warned him. “I might let you live to serve me.”
“I have bowed to a human once already, and never again,” Bert replied with contempt, knife-claws out and his clock-heart’s needle spinning. “Overclock.”
Steam rose out of his wooden frame as he rushed towards Simon with immense speed. He pounced like a cat on the hunt with inhuman precision, while leaving a smokey trail behind.
Simon managed to intercept the attack by putting back on his Strength for Speed ring, his morning star clashing with claws, but Bert quickly followed through with a frenzied flurry of blows. He spun in a way no human body could achieve, kicking and slashing and twisting in a furious attempt to lacerate his way past Simon’s defense. He leaped back to dodge Simon’s counterattack, ran to the side in an attempt to take the Overlord from behind, and then quickly lunged forward for another assault.
Bert had taken a leaf out of Renal’s book and focused on hit-and-run tactics, using whatever boost his mechanical body provided to compensate for his Class’ innate weakness in physical combat. It was a good strategy, but he had no shadowy double to force Simon to divide his attention like with Renal. He waited for Bert to close in to blast him back with Chaos Wave, then extended his hand with Devil’s Arm to grab him by the throat.
“Hellfire,” Simon cast.
His flames burst out of his hand and began to consume Bert’s wooden frame.
The living puppet screamed in agony and attempted to cut off Simon’s arm to free himself, but the Overlord simply drained his thralls of life to keep regenerating faster than Bert could hurt him. The searing heat melted his button-eyes off his face and slowly exposed metallic bones beneath his wooden frame.
“Seems you’re human enough to feel pain,” Simon mused. “Answer this question of mine, and this torment will end.” He brought Bert closer, lifting him up above him. “Where’s Anna Paimon?”
Although most of Bert’s face had begun to burn away, he still had enough teeth to flash a contemptuous grin. “You don’t understand that girl’s true value, do you?” he taunted Simon. “I can’t let you interfere with this matter…”
Click.
Simon glanced at the puppet’s clockwork heart, whose needle was now spinning so fast it was blowing the flames away.
“So here it comes…” Bert burst out in insane laughter. “The grand finale!”
Simon threw the puppet away with all of his strength. “Shadowshie–”
Bert’s heart exploded in a massive blast that destroyed the stage, sent shrapnel of his body flying in all directions, and threw Simon back. He fell onto the audience’s seats, crushing them under his weight and causing some of the corpses sitting in them to fall off.
Unfortunately, more explosions resonated through the walls, blasting the theater’s balcony, cracking its walls, and causing the ground to shake. The noise of whirring and spinning gears echoed in their wake, alongside furious ticking.
Bert had booby-trapped his entire estate!
Realizing the danger he was in, Simon quickly grabbed a piece of Bert’s splinter-shrapnel as proof of his victory, then tried to teleport away back to his Dungeon… only for invisible walls to restrain him.
Teleportation cancelled by anti-teleporation wards.
A kill box to the end, Simon grunted as he quickly came up with a new plan, switching his current ring for one shielding him against Frost damage. “Hellfrost.”
He poured all of his miasma into the spell and enveloped himself in an ever growing cocoon of ice as more debris collapsed above him. Explosion after explosion rocked the walls and caused the ceiling to fall upon the stage.
How long did Simon spend trapped in his self-inflicted prison while being buried by a rain of rubble? Five minutes, maybe ten? Either way, his cocoon of ice shouldered tons of debris falling upon him, cracking at the edge under the weight yet somehow withstanding the pressure.
The explosions eventually died down, leaving Simon trapped under tons of rubble, but alive. Thankfully, the wards woven into the structure appeared to have faded out with its self-destruction and he managed to teleport back to a crypt in his Tellurian Dungeon, free, whole, and rewarded.
Level 58 Overlord Level: Devour Crestone V (Active): You may consume a Crestone to absorb a Perk you have unlocked with its associated Class. The Devour Crestone V Perk then permanently turns into the newly absorbed Perk.
“Your Majesty.” Simon glanced at his left to find Duchar near him, the necromancer having been busy disassembling his own son’s now abandoned flesh-golem corpse on an operation table. “How was your hunt?”
“That was harder than I would have liked,” Simon admitted. Bert blowing himself up rather than being killed by Simon directly also meant he hadn’t left a soul gem behind either, if he had been low-leveled enough to do so in the first place. “And he was warned.”
Verney was the obvious suspect, since Bert answered to him and he had refused to give Simon precious intel, but why set up an ambush after making himself so suspicious? To observe and assess Simon’s abilities? Silk and Velvet could have told Bert too, in the hope they would kill each other. Either way, the fact that one of the parties had already backstabbed him meant the dominoes were about to fall.
And what should Simon make of their interest in Anna? Bert’s reaction showed the organization was indeed responsible for her disappearance. What did he mean by her ‘true value’? It couldn’t be so simple as using her as a hostage against her father, and the Cobweb’s association with the Zodiac Fiends pointed to some ugly possibilities.
I’ll find out soon enough, Simon thought as he summoned Velvet’s teleportation gem from his Inventory. “Do you see any trap woven into this device, Duchar?”
Duchar cast a few analysis spells and shook his head. “None that I can detect. The gem appears to lead to a destination somewhere in Lore as far as I can tell.”
“Then cast buffs on me and prepare to summon me back at my telepathic command.” Simon was wary the sisters might lay an ambush, so having multiple avenues of escape would reduce his chances of being cornered. “Let’s ensure I do not look vulnerable.”
After healing until he was back in top shape and casting more buffs than he knew what to do with, Simon triggered the gem. Reality blurred around him, the crypt around him fading away into a large, comfortable room with shelves and racks holding various… questionable instruments such as whips, padlocks, chains, spiked collars, and sharp blades. Simon first thought it was some kind of torture room until he noticed pillows, cushions, and a massive, iron-framed bed with numerous leather straps and ropes attached to it. A woman sat idly on its silken bedsheet, bathing in moonlight filtered through the curtained window.
“Simon,” Velvet greeted him with a lascivious smile. “How did your hunt go?”
No assassin here, Simon thought, though he didn’t relax or remove his armor either. If she’s disappointed by my survival, she’s hiding it well.
“Our quarry is dead, but he was forewarned,” he replied upon summoning Bert’s leftover shrapnel and tossing it to her. “Was it by you?”
“Why would we help one of Verney’s supporters kill one of ours?” Velvet replied upon catching the piece of shrapnel and studying it. “I wanted his head.”
“He blew himself up, alongside his estate,” Simon replied, crossing his arms. “You can go check for yourself.”
“I’m sure my sister is doing exactly that as we speak,” Velvet replied upon flipping the shrapnel between her fingers. “You did well.”
“I didn’t work for free,” Simon reminded her. “I want my reward.”
“Don’t worry, my sister will come back with the grimoire soon enough.” Velvet licked her lips and cocked her head to the side. “I was about to offer you a bit of fun while we were waiting for her return, but you don’t seem in the mood to take off your… protection.”
“I’ve just been impaled,” Simon replied in annoyance. “So no, I’m not in the mood.”
“I would let you impale me, and much more.” She pointed at the various ‘tools’ nearby. “You could put a slave collar on my neck and use me to your heart’s content.”
Simon scoffed in disdain. “Has that kind of promise ever worked for you?”
“All men want to own a woman. They can only think with their swords.” Velvet’s smile faded away. “Why don’t you rape them? Your slave girls? I know you haven’t touched them in the months you’ve been with us, even though the kish clearly wants you to.”
“Were you watching me while I slept?” Simon crossed his arms. “Does it matter what I do with my property?”
“It does, because it baffles me.” Velvet looked downright annoyed. “And I dislike it.”
“You talk too much, sister.” Simon’s head turned to the left and spotted Silk stepping out of the shadows. “You wear your emotions on your sleeve. It’s a weakness.”
“And whose fault is that?” Velvet snorted. “That’s all you left me.”
All that you left me? Simon wondered as the sisters exchanged an uneasy glance. Is that… pain, I see?
The strange moment lasted a few seconds before Silk focused back on him, all business once more. “You have succeeded, so we can proceed with the coup,” she said, her grimoire appearing in her hands. “A deal is a deal, so I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“How does the device work?” Simon inquired, skipping the pleasantries.
“It is a special summoning grimoire, similar to scrolls that allow some Classes like Ninjas to call upon a contracted entity without having summoning abilities,” Velvet said.
“The Zodiac crystals were all sealed by the elves in ancient times, and those wards still hold today. Breaking them would have released the creature at full power, so we went with a novel solution,” Silk added, “We transferred the seal and its content into this book.”
Simon’s eyes widened as the pieces fell into place. “You didn’t break the seal… you just moved the cell to another prison.”
“One with a limited release program incorporated,” Velvet mused. “The wards have started faltering over time, so the archdemon’s miasma leaks out.”
Silk nodded. “This grimoire can summon a shadow of the fiend inside by shaping this miasma into the form of a lesser avatar under the wielder’s command. The demon has to agree to lend its power, but we’ve found that they’re quite content to be summoned for the purpose of inflicting pain and terror on mortals.”
“But if the grimoire simply absorbs the existing seal, and those are faltering, then there will come a time when the demon escapes the grimoire,” Simon pointed out.
“The wards are good enough to last decades, if not centuries,” Velvet replied with nonchalance, “That will be somebody else’s problem down the line.”
They don’t know about Abraxas, Simon realized. The Crab would burst out of the book the moment the comet’s light shone in its constellation. That’s why Verney left it in their hands. They only have a year’s worth of protection.
Either way, now that he understood how the grimoire worked, Simon could create an accessory that absorbed a crystal and its wards in a way that would allow him to move it around semi-safely for the Dark Visionary ritual, one that he could put on his head without letting the fiend possess him.
It was time to fashion himself a crown.
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