Chain 037: Overlord

Chain 037: Overlord
Location: The Dragon Kingdom
Age: 20
Identity: Player/Human/Generalist
Drawbacks: [+1000] Embroiled In Politics, Racial Discrimination, Wrath of Nazarick
Scenario: [+300] Hero of Myth and Legend

[Free]      Personal Inventory
[Free]      Themed Aesthetics
[Free]      Innate Talent: Identify Talents
[Free]      Innate Talent: Magic Item Crafter
[Free]      Innate Talent: Beastiary Knowledge
[200/2000]  Crafting Classes
[800/2000]  Level One Hundred
[Free]      Class Skill: Rogue
[900/2000]  Skillful And Resourceful
[1000/2000] Class Skill: Damage Focus
[1100/2000] Class Skill: Talismonger
[1100/2200] Item Bonus: +200
[Free]      Pay To Win: Magic Charger
[Free]      Pay To Win: Ring of Sustenance
[1400/2200] Crafting Materials, Supplies, and Tools
[1800/2200] The Caloric Stone
[2200/2200] Ring of Elru
[2500/2500] Realm of Heroes Scenario Reward: United Focus

Buildwise... there's a bit of min-maxing done here. One innate talent free because I'm human. Two are free because they're discounted to generalists and, applying the Player discount to them both, that gives a double discount and makes them free. (Pretty sure that's condoned.) In addition to that, crafting classes discounts the high end crafting material, crafting material discounts the Caloric Stone.

Oh, the Ring of Elru will also incorporate a certain ring that I'm importing with me. It's not heteromorphic race cheese, but it's not all that far off, especially considering all of the multiclassing.

So to start out... walking around the world with Civilian Mode active is an interesting prospect. Not just because World Items remain active - witness the ring on my finger, my horcrux within the Ring of Elru, with a simple notice-me-not charm on it - but because as a civilian, no one can see my abilities. No one really questions when a normal human picks up a sword and goes to war alone against the various demi-humans that invade from the Beastman Country. They DO notice, however, as that normal human survives solo battles by the skin of his teeth... then engages bigger game, slowly acquiring better equipment. Magic? No, no magic being used - simply swinging a sword.

It shouldn't work, by all reasonable measures, but that's why it does. No one expects the person swinging the sword around, not bothering with any special abilities over than slashing away, to be anything special other than a crazed warrior. And in my downtime, walking through the kingdom, teaching the art of artificing to those who wish to learn. And sure, it's not quite as easy for the locals to learn it as it is for me - but I sleep about two hours every other night, I have the time to spare in between running around and killing everything. Empowering crafters, not to mention crafting my own equipment for resale when I get bored, means things can act as a force multiplier - suddenly the local army is much less ineffective than they used to be. And being able to see talents means I can pick out exactly who is best suited to do that. Within a matter of weeks, the army's equipment was upgraded from minor or medium tier to high at a minimum, with the handful of legacy tier produced being set aside for commanders. And while the secret of their production wasn't passed on... when I was bored or otherwise unoccupied, I'd fashion rings of sustenance and simply give them to the kingdom in exchange for their goodwill. An army travels on its stomach, or so they say, but the Dragon Kingdom's army never needed to stop for lunch when on the march.

Certainly, anywhere I go I attract attention. Initially I had a shortsword, and as time passed I got progressively larger swords. Longsword, broadsword, zweihander, eventually something larger than a buster sword. It made for a distinctive look. Not only that, but the equipment I wore - always light armor, akin to a certain type of knight, if slightly modernized. Despite the anger thrown my way by anyone who wasn't human during my travels, I never unsheathed my weapon unless it was someone who deserved it. Even if relatively peaceful demi-humans, few of those as there are, would often go so far as to throw rotting fruit at me. Elves would try to subtly trip me up, but I'd ignore them - in fact, it became well known that I didn't discriminate in terms of what I did for justice, and visits to the Re-Estize Kingdom were at times... awkward, as I'd simply liberate slaves and take them away. En masse. Which didn't do any favors for the stability of the area, to say the least.

It came to pass, with the added agitation of the population of Beastman Country, that political opportunists tried to drag me into things. At first it was a matter of them going "you should be in a position of leadership", but I'm fairly sure that would have been a terrible idea. Better idea: cementing an alliance between it and neighboring nations. Since it wasn't in quite as weak a position as it might otherwise have been, it was something that even worked - even if things had to be finagled a little. Considering the way things had gone, the Slane Theocracy was more than happy to sign on. After all, their unofficial policy was human supremacy, and I was making that into a reality, in a manner of speaking. And though things were already tense, when a certain incident occurred and the city of E-Rantel was ceded to the Sorcerer Kingdom, the rest was taken under the Theocracy's... protection. As a peacekeeping operation. When the dust settled, the Re-Estize Republic was notably smaller, but firmly in the Dual Alliance as a protectorate. Unfortunately... what was left of it was largely mountainous territory. (What was left of it was formally absorbed by the Theocracy in a handful of years - two thirds of that nation was absorbed by an entirely different kingdom.)

The whole course of events was something which brought me to the attention of someone who called himself Ainz Ooal Gown. When the Sorcerer Kingdom was being established, there were those who wanted to have a certain thorn in their side destroyed. After all, the assault on the Dragon Kingdom had been blunted, with the supposed mad human slowly carving his way into their nation instead. And despite that most of the magic was made to miss... some didn't. Enough that it was noticed that direct magical attacks had no effect on me at all. This is anomalous enough that it's beyond the World Item properties known to him, and further attempts at intelligence gathering through ambitious underlings went poorly. Not fatally, mind you, but it was bad enough. After all, my battles were formulaic. I typically opened by offering an opportunity to flee, and the more worthy opponents were given a second opportunity to flee once they were nearly defeated. Beastmen tended not to take that opportunity, usually - and if I saw them twice they weren't offered a second chance again.

This, of course, escalated rather predictably. The Dual Alliance tried to play nice, but the alleged desire of Ainz Ooal Gown to rule the world couldn't be denied, and so they went to war - with the beastmen at the kingdom's back to try to get revenge for the losses inflicted upon them. I'm not certain how much of my actions were the cause of all of this, but despite matching his charisma, I didn't have Ainz's assortment of overpowered minions. What I did have, however, was prep time... and I used it judiciously. When he came for me at the head of his armies, a desire to parlay for peace on his nonexistent lips as I met him with the Dual Alliance's army in the distance behind me, I smiled... tossed down the sword... and then disabled civilian mode.

"What do you say to a little player-versus-player action, Satoru-san?" I asked him, clad in custom-crafted Caloric gear from head to toe, a lit beam saber in my hand and a smile on my lips.

At which point he threw everything he had at me. Ordered everyone and everything to dogpile me and kill me. His minions were surprised at his vehemence; his lesser forces charged forward without a concern.

The standard counter-Charm for Ainz Ooal Gown's Death Army is, of course, Fiendfyre... and months' worth of stockpiled talismans being run through in rapid enough succession that it was like an army of high-level sorcerers launching debuffs and mass-destruction spells on them.

No, this didn't kill anyone that MATTERED. But it was enough to give them pause and cause them to make a tactical withdrawal. The stalemate lasted for years, with a rather significant no-man's-land between the Sorcerer Kingdom and the Dual Alliance in the end.

Thanks to political intrigues, kingdoms beyond the Dual Alliance would send their people to test their mettle in battle, but little enough significant help occurred from them. In time, enough people gained the skills of crafting in the Dragon Kingdom that they were able to do more than keep pace with the medieval age, making crude (but effective) technologies that anyone could use; the Sorcerer Kingdom expanded in other directions, though they still tried to attack me fairly often. Almost monthly, usually; occasionally more often. Achron abilities were useful in keeping that from happening in any populated area, usually.

Further political intrigue saw the collapse of the Slane Theocracy thanks to one Demiurge electing to kill its leadership - all six churches' worth - in one fell swoop; he was the only high level member of Nazarick that I actually killed, in retaliation for such a bold move. After that, the Dragon Kingdom absorbed Slane, becoming the Dragon Empire. The fallout enraged the Sorcerer Kingdom and the war, which had cooled to lukewarm at best, heated up again for a full year - Ainz tried to engage me along with the rest of Nazarick, but the majority of them withdrew after I gave him an unhealing wound and they saw just how utterly ineffective their attacks were. I'd fought that particular battle a little differently - I walked out into the open, let them throw as much magic as they could into a pre-prepared battlefield as they wanted, and then teleported in front of Ainz and slashed, leaving an angry looking scar across one arm.

This, in hindsight, was probably a bad idea, and was also probably why the constant combat lasted for a year rather than one or two months...

But regardless, in the end, it can only hold up for so long. Over a decade and a half of constant fighting, but my mark was made. As my time drew to a close, the army gave one final hurrah; years of training, pushing their abilities to the limit, would pay off. Charging into the Sorcerer Kingdom and taking back what they had annexed of the Re-Estize kingdom, their crafters still their greatest strength as even the most basic soldier had the highest tier of gear. Literally highest tier, that is; the commanders at this point typically had Relic level gear, though that was relatively rare.

While Nazarick tried to retaliate, I wasn't there, for the first time ever; they found the battlefield they were accustomed to meeting me at to be empty. Then again, perhaps it was cheating to apparate to the Great Tomb itself? Instead they found a hilariously huge number of talismans triggered when they reached a certain point, unleashing hell upon them.

After all, the standard counter-Charm to the Great Tomb of Nazarick is, of course, prep time.