What did he do wrong?

The question was on Simon’s mind the whole night after his escape from the Academy, first through Darkflight and then by teleportation after rejoining Belzemine and the Honorius family. No matter how much he reconsidered all of his previous interactions with Anna, he drew a blank at what specifically caused her to turn against him.

Was it the mention of failed demonic possession? The fight with Thalas? It had to be that. He had been careless when he engaged his half-brother in a fistfight while trying to stay incognito. A bastard shouldn’t strike a prince of the blood unless he wished to lose his head. That was a wisdom he understood very well before the reigns, but which he had forgotten as he grew in power. Isabelle and Anna must have then discussed the incident until the subject of demonic possession—which Simon had blamed his Dark Visionary-related sickness on—and then reached the wrong conclusion. Simon would keep it in mind for future reigns to ensure he stuck to a specific script.

But that didn’t explain why Anna rebuffed him prior to the confrontation. As far as Simon could recall, he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary except perhaps mentioning the Light Megalith. Maybe she picked up on some of the miasma residue surrounding him from the Dark Visionary ritual due to her connection with the Light?

What did he do wrong? What specific deed caused that whole chain of events to spiral into such chaos? What line, what telltale action caused Anna to react like that?

“So far, interrogations have mostly focused on signs of demonic possession,” Leonard informed him through telepathy. He and Meredith had been immediately approached by Dassein’s soldiers after their master’s flight. “We told them that, not having been acquainted with you before our departure from Frightwall, we had no frame of reference to draw from. I cannot tell whether they bought the excuse or not.”

“Deny everything, and warn me if they put you under magical examination,” Simon ordered them. He had hidden their brands for safety, but it hadn’t stopped the coalition that brought him down in Cocagne from noticing Shabram’s and tracking him down. “You saw nothing wrong. Our bounty hunt outside Beleth’s walls was just that, a failed hunt.”

“Yes, of course.” There was unease in Leonard’s tone. Had he come to believe that possession nonsense, too? “As Your Majesty wishes.”

Simon grunted and brooded on his icy throne. After his flight from the Academy, Simon had ordered his new slaves—demons and shifters—to restore the Kish Palace as his new Dungeon residence. He had to admit the frosty throne room did add a certain fearsome aura to his new residency. The cold didn’t bother him thanks to his strong Frost affinity, though some of his retainers did have to put on coats.

“–levels of cortisol and adrenaline are abnormally high,” Duchar said as he read his notes. “The acidic nature of Your Majesty’s blood makes sample analysis difficult, but the symptoms are consistent with a patient facing constant and elevated levels of stress.”

“The soul wound and accumulated mental fatigue must have delayed recovery,” Belzemine concluded.

“But I’ve already regained my strength,” Simon argued with his doctors. Besides the fact that it was true, Casval was in the room—in his dragon form no less—and he had no intention of showing weakness in his presence.

“A wound may heal, but scars take longer to fade away,” Duchar noted. “The fact Your Majesty drew upon hateful memories to heal himself may have tilted your emotional state towards anger or flight-or-fight emotional responses. I would suggest practicing meditation.”

“What you need is some hoard time,” Casval suggested. “A good night’s sleep on your riches, a you-time with no interruption. It usually soothes my nerves.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Simon replied with a hint of annoyance.

“Then I go on a vacation,” Casval replied. “I visit a village of poor humans, I take their generous tribute, then I add it to my hoard so it grows. That way, I am reminded I am wealthy and others are not.”

Simon had to admit that bullying Thalas would have improved his mood right now, but the Berserker was unfortunately out of his reach for the moment…

“Is there anything that Your Majesty finds relaxing?” Cassandra asked with a hint of genuine concern.

“I like theater and operas,” Simon admitted.

“Then we go to Bujan to recruit the Bard after my sister returns,” Casval suggested with enthusiasm. “Friends do go on vacations together.”

“Do you want me to bring one of your new concubines to entertain you, Master?” Pallian suggested. “A few of them can sing and dance.”

“That…” Simon briefly considered it, and then hated himself for doing so. “That won’t be necessary. Leave me alone to think.”

He dismissed his retainers to ruminate on everything, before an idea crossed his mind.

“Wait, Cassandra,” he said as she prepared to leave the room with the others. “Stay here a little longer.”

She perked up in slight surprise, but lingered behind. “What is it, Your Majesty?”

“Beforehand… I need your honest opinion, Cassandra.” She had always been far wiser than her years suggested and had been a good source of valuable advice in his Magvolia reign. Perhaps she could explain what went wrong in this one. “There is something that gnaws at me.”

“I suspected as much,” Cassandra admitted. “Your Majesty looks a little angrier each time I see him.”

“Is it so visible?” Simon let out a sigh. “I’ve… I have a friend at the Academy called Anna. My honorary cousin. We’ve been close before and I was eager to meet her again, but…” Simon folded his hands thoughtfully. “When we met again, it was like she didn’t recognize me. I tried to act as I did before, and yet it seemed my very presence disturbed her.”

“I see.” Cassandra pondered his words. “How long has it been since you last saw this Anna?”

“A… a few months?” Simon struggled to remember after living figurative years throughout the reigns. “It can’t have been more than a few months. I said all the right things, and yet I alienated her. I don’t see where I misstepped.”

“Maybe Your Majesty didn’t misstep,” Cassandra replied. “Maybe you simply changed.”

Simon’s fists clenched on their own. “What does that mean?”

“You said you acted as you did before,” Cassandra pointed out. “So you weren’t really like how you were before. You were faking it.”

Simon shifted in his seat, her words rattling him. “You’re saying Anna noticed something off, even though I said what she expected to hear?”

“I think she noticed something off, especially if she knows you well. I can always tell when my father and my brother lie to me, even when they mean well. The body, the face, the way we carry ourselves, our voice… the truth always bleeds through when we do not pay attention.”

Did Anna truly know him so well? Then again, she had been one of the few people who interacted with him on friendly terms before the reigns alongside Lauriane, who had also noticed a change in him.

“Cassandra… What was your first impression of me?” Simon inquired. “Be honest.”

Cassandra put a finger on her lips. “Someone tense, tired, and always on edge. Someone dangerous who I mustn’t cross.” She paused a second before adding, “A man with blood on his hands.”

“Even before I said anything?” Simon frowned. “What made you think that?”

“I cannot say exactly. A chill running down my spine? Your Majesty has a threatening presence. It is noticeable.”

“I… see.” Simon had been fresh off a reign he spent as a mob boss of the Cobweb, on top of all the traumatic truths he learned from the Dark Visionary ritual, and he hadn’t been truly weak in a very long time. But still, to inspire such dread in a girl he had technically just met at first sight… was his power starting to bleed through his actions and body language even when he paid attention? “Thank you for your honesty.”

Cassandra nodded and departed the room, leaving Simon to ponder her piece of wisdom. Had he changed so much that he simply couldn’t hide it anymore?

Simon knew the reigns had taken their toll on his psyche. He had done things he would never even have considered when he first woke up with the Overlord Class and accepted that, yet his time at the Academy had been uniquely frustrating. Why did his reunion with Anna unsettle him so much?

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Because I had hoped I could wash my hands of those reigns and forget it all, Simon thought as he looked at his gauntleted palms. I thought I could relive better times if I repeated the right steps. That I had some sanctuary I could retreat to.

But… people weren’t golems that reacted a certain way with a press of a button, and neither was he a perfect actor. All the stress he had accumulated from the Dark Visionary ritual, the Cobweb reign, the loss of Remedia and everything else beforehand had taken its toll on him. His soul wound mustn’t have helped matters either.

And Anna had been right, he was only playing the student, repeating classes he had already lived through out of boredom. After everything he had gone through, he couldn’t truly relive those peaceful Academy days, no more than he could relive his childhood in spite of his immense power.

And it infuriated him.

“Are you laughing at me right now, all three of you?” Simon snapped at the empty throne room. He didn’t feel any presence, but he knew those three were watching. “Does it amuse you to see me like this? Do you find my pain and loneliness entertaining?”

He received no answer, and didn’t need any. He already knew the truth.

He was stuck with them for many lifetimes.

—----

With little else to do besides enslaving shifter tribes, Simon decided to occupy himself by practicing his Demonbinding.

His thralls had established a laboratory in one of the palace’s wings, filling a hall with worktables, vats of liquid, and bookshelves full of Duchar’s books on anatomy, alchemy, and necromancy. Lorimor, the subject of today’s experiment, was sitting in a binding circle under Hector’s watch. The undead Executioner now possessed an improved version of his own body through the helmet he inhabited, and kept his Class outfit on at all times thanks to the Dungeon’s ambient miasma empowering him.

“How are you holding up, Hector?” Simon asked his retainer once he walked into the laboratory with Duchar, who had insisted on being present.

“Quite well, Your Majesty.” Hector no longer rasped when speaking, and his sentences were no longer broken by short periods of silence. “My mind hasn’t been so clear in many years.”

“I have high hopes for your next vessel, my son,” Duchar said. “Soon, you will be as good as new… in a manner of speaking.”

“Today’s experiment ought to provide valuable data on that front,” Simon mused as he turned his attention to Lorimor. “Are you certain you wish to proceed?”

“My life is yours, oh Lord of Dark,” Lorimor replied obsequiously. “To become one with the Abyss by the grace of your powers… it is an honor beyond words.”

Well, at least he was happy about it. Many of Simon’s retainers had begun to trail behind him in levels, and merging a few willing candidates with demons was a promising avenue to correct that issue. It would also teach Simon the limits and influence of demonic possession.

“Does the demon’s power influence the possession process?” Simon asked Duchar. “I know for a fact the Zodiac Fiends can only possess hosts with certain attributes.”

“Archfiends are usually restricted to specific hosts due to their unique nature, yes,” Duchar confirmed. “Otherwise, lesser demons can possess anyone who agrees to form a contract with them or who sells them their soul. They can attempt a merger without explicit consent, but the target must be vulnerable to spiritual influence for the attempt to succeed.”

“Like by being a Darkblood or Visionary,” Simon guessed.

“Usually, but not only that,” Duchar said. “Demons naturally seek a vessel that resonates with them, like a hand seeking a glove that fits it. A lustful demon will find itself more at home in an individual focused on carnal desires, the same way a greedy demon would find itself right at home in a landlord’s body. In general, the more harmonious the pairing, the quicker and easier the possession.”

“And can multiple demons possess a single host?”

“To a point,” Duchar replied. “When multiple demons possess a single body, the host becomes something of a spiritual pressure cooker. The various fiends merge into a composite entity with the subject’s soul serving as a lynchpin called a ‘legion’, which then usually violently bursts out of the body. The more demons merge before this rupture event occurs, the stronger the creature.”

Let’s not waste Lorimor on that, then, Simon thought. As much as he disliked the cultist, he was still a mostly loyal follower. Come to think of it, Deathmastery lets me infuse inanimate objects with any spirit bound to my will. Would demonbound fiends count? I should test that later.

Either way, quite a few of Simon’s demonic servants had voiced interest in merging with Lorimor, either out of curiosity or to strengthen themselves. Gazers and watchers in particular seemed keen on possessing a Scholar, likely because they preyed on paranoia and the shame of secrets being revealed. What better soulmate could there be for their kind than a man damned by his own overwhelming curiosity?

In the end, Simon settled on binding a watcher to Lorimor. He summoned the monster inside the circle, and then witnessed its miasma form entering the Scholar’s mouth and nose like smoke. He sensed the echo of the merger through his Devil Brands as the human soul and demon merged.

Lorimor immediately underwent a monstrous transformation as the demonic presence warped his flesh and soul. His skin turned into a dark shade of purple as bloated eyes began to open all over him, in his palms, on his torso… his face drowned in them until most of his skull became a squirming mass of ocular organs. Only Lorimor’s mouth remained of his face, his teeth morphing into sharp fangs, while his nails turned into claws.

Yet the scariest part was the howl of pleasure coming out of his mutating maw, a cry of pure ecstasy. Lorimor had become so twisted that merging with a demonic entity brought him joy in spite of his body’s horrific twisting.

Completing the fusion also provided Simon with a rush of experience that finally pushed him over his next level’s threshold.

Level 61 Overlord Perk: Warmonger VII (Active): You can transform your Overlord scepter into any type of weapon you wish, such as a bow or sword; though it doesn’t change the stats, it does let you use weapon-exclusive techniques.

The rush of pleasure that followed the level-up eased his mental stress somewhat, though Simon found the Perk slightly disappointing since he had no weapon technique of his own. He guessed he should probably invest a few reigns into mastering a few.

“How… rapturous…” Lorimor said, his voice now deeper and more ominous, his hands touching the bulging mass of eyeballs his skull had turned into. Hector readied his axe to kill the Scholar should he prove rebellious, yet he was clearly more enamored with his transformation than anything. “So much knowledge accumulated over so many decades, so much fear…”

“The Devil Brands are still there, and they remain bound to me,” Simon noted. A possessed Eole had been able to burn off slave tattoos a few reigns back, but it would take more than that to shake an Overlord’s hold over his subject’s soul. “Can you still use your Class, Lorimor?”

“A Scholar I still am, my master…” Lorimor replied upon putting his Class garb on, the robes hardly hiding the man’s inhuman appearance. “A Scholar of fear.”

“This pairing seems to be particularly harmonious,” Duchar observed as he called upon a small group of undead dummies. “Let us see if he retains the watcher’s powers too.”

Lorimor proceeded to blast the undead dummies with eye-beams for half an hour under their supervision. Watchers loved to use a natural version of the Countdown curse—which let them feed on the fear of people knowing of their incoming, inevitable demise—but they could also immobilize, terrify, petrify, drive insane anyone gazing at them, or fire beams of psychic energies at their targets. The new Lorimor had inherited all those powers.

“It would seem that Your Majesty’s Devil Brands eased the merging, likely by creating a direct resonance between the demon and Lorimor’s soul,” Duchar noted after casting a few analysis spells. “Such fusions often take days to complete, yet his stats have already solidified into the sum of their parts. He might as well be a watcher with a Scholar Class.”

“My mind is alight with possibilities,” Lorimor said, with Simon noting that he used ‘my’ rather than ‘ours.’ “I sense so many fearful minds outside, waiting to be opened like books.”

Simon scowled. “And what will you do?”

“Read them, Your Majesty,” Lorimor replied with disturbing calmness. “I will learn and catalogue their fears, their dreads, and their shames. I will put all their secrets to paper and draw the patterns until I have unified the grand theory of terror.”

According to Simon’s studies, the personality resulting from demonic possession was driven by a combination of the demon’s focused desires and the host’s wants and needs. He guessed Lorimor’s obsession with forbidden knowledge and the watcher’s focus on feeding on people’s paranoia and insecurities had merged into an academic fascination for terror…

Maybe he could put this new obsession to use.

“I will commission you a research work,” Simon decided. “All of the Zodiac Fiends embody a primal fear of man. Do you think you could identify what each of these demons represents, and extrapolate some of their behavior and abilities from it?”

“Such a brilliant task… an inventory of primal fears…” Lorimor rubbed his eyelid-riddled hands. “I will compile a grimoire worthy of you, Lord of Dark.”

“Then I shall make you this palace’s official librarian. You may use some of our prisoners and my books for your research, but I forbid you from harming my slaves and subjects.” Simon dismissed his new possessed thrall with a wave of his hand and addressed Duchar once he was gone. “Do you think they could be eventually disentangled?”

Duchar hesitated. “The longer a possession lasts, the more difficult and strenuous it is to exfiltrate one identity from the other. Considering how the Devil Brands served as an anchor during this particular merging process, I fear an attempt at exorcising the watcher might prove… lethal for both participants.”

“Those two don’t seem willing to split either,” Hector noted. “They get along too well. They will resist.”

“So we assume it’s permanent,” Simon said, having feared as much. While he now had a new way of empowering his retainers, he would have to ensure they consented and that they would merge with a partner that wouldn’t utterly twist them. “Keep an eye on Lorimor and monitor his changes.”

Simon heard incoming footsteps heavy with purpose, and tensed up upon sensing a familiar aura. He and his retainers glanced at the threshold to find a certain intruder strolling into the laboratory like she owned the place… which she did, in a matter of speaking.

“I overheard you,” Vouivre said, dispensing with flattery or introductions. “I find value in your research. I have completed my work with the Fish crystal and created some dragonkin with it, but while they are strong enough to reduce the countryside to cinder, they remain a pale imitation of my magnificence. There is room for improvement."

“You would suggest merging them with demons to strengthen them?” Simon guessed. “This might break your control over them.”

“It won’t happen, I assure you of that.” Vouivre smirked thinly. “But do your worst, Overlord Magnos. It will amuse me to see you fail to turn my creations against me.”

Simon scoffed. “Is that a challenge?”

“You could say that.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve heard about your troubles in Beleth.”

Simon scowled. “It’s a minor setback. My plans for Lady Paimon are still unfolding.”

“Are they?” Vouivre studied him for a moment before moving on. “I will not interfere, as you asked… unless you mess up. I would advise you against disappointing me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Simon replied dryly. “I take it you are ready to be crowned?”

“No, not yet. A few tribes are stubborn, but my new dragons will succeed in breaking those your birds’ songs haven’t.” Vouivre met his gaze. “Is it true you enjoy those human ‘operas’?”

“I do.” Casval must have told her. “You want to organize one?”

“No need. The Bard is already planning one in Bujan, and it would be wise for you to leave Telluria for some time until your clutch moves on from their search.” A flash of amusement passed over Vouivre’s cold expression. “Have you ever heard a mermaid sing beneath the waves?”