Usually, afternoons for the Emperor of Tuzandadia were a leisurely sort of thing, but not today. Today, the Emperor was having a crisis. Specifically, a wardrobe crisis. He had tried on everything, and nothing seemed right. He had tried on everything. Nothing seemed right.

  "I can't wear this," said the Emperor to one of his servants. "It's simply too flamboyant."

  "Perhaps you could wear the other one, your highness?" said one of the servants.

  "No," said the Emperor. "This one is too austere. I can't be seen in this. What will the people think?"

  "They will think that you are their Emperor, and that you are well-dressed, your highness," said the servant.

  "No, they won't. They'll think I'm a frump," said the Emperor, sighing and flopping down on a chaise lounge.

  The servant sighed. It was a long-suffering sort of sigh. He had been the Emperor's valet for twenty years, and he had never seen the Emperor like this. The Emperor was always so confident, so sure of himself. He was a good Emperor, a just Emperor, a kind Emperor. But today, he was a mess.

  "Your highness," said the valet. "Perhaps the problem is not the clothes, but the man wearing them."

  The Emperor bubbled with rage.

  [Ancestral Rage activated]

  His eyes were set aflame, burning with embers of instantaneous hatred that had been burning for generations.

  He opened his inventory.

  Inventory: Emperor of Tuzandadia, The

  Carrying Capacity: 42142/69001

  Soul Sucking Straw (enchanted)

  +10 const, +0.5 carry weight

  Focus to see more items...

  Excellent. The Emperor was most pleased with this item, so he equipped it.

  [Soul Sucking Straw equipped]

  [+10 const]

  The Emperor felt his vitality improve. It was a great feeling. Addictive, even.

  "W-what are you going to do, your highness?" said the valet with fear.

  "Calm down," said the Emperor. "Stop shaking so much."

  But the valet was unable to control themself. The fear was far too great.

  "Fine, have it your way," said the Emperor. He raised his right hand and thought, 'Cast Paralyze.'

  [Mana 99.999%]

  The Emperor had a very high amount of mana, so high that even a paralyze spell barely spent anything at all. He watched with glee as the familiar green energy shot from his quivering fingertips and coiled around the valet in a flash, rendering them completely frozen.

  "Excellent," said the Emperor. "Now it is time."

  The Emperor stepped towards the valet. Then, he turned them around and stuck the straw into the back of their neck.

  [Soul Smoothie activated]

  The valet was unable to even react as the Emperor placed his lips on the straw and sucked and slurped, slowly at first, but then with more and more force. The valet's already meager stature quickly became excessively gaunt, soon to the point of appearing shrink-wrapped, until at once it appeared that all the remained of the valet was literal skin and bones. Their eyes were the last to go, shooting back down through their sockets and away like some sort of soupy egg.

  [Total hp increased by 15]

  [Total mana increased by 2]

  [Const increased by 5]

  [Str increased by 3]

  [Char increased by 2]

  ['Valet' is dead]

  "Delicious," said the Emperor. He understood why the cauldrons were necessary, certainly, but straw had always been his favorite way to consume and absorb the attributes of others. It was, in his mind, the preferable method of expansion. Sometimes gradual to the point of being unnoticeable, considering how weak his valets usually were, but that didn't make it any less satisfying to the Emperor. He loved every second of it. Always.

  A loud crash of a nearby door being slammed open caught the Emperor's attention. In stomped a hulking brute of a woman, her face a mask of fury, her armor tarnished and dented. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, and in her hand, she clutched a crumpled piece of parchment.

  "Father!" she roared, her voice cracking with fury and grief. "What have you done?"

  The Emperor of Tuzandadia turned, a placid smile on his face. "Princess Aurelia. What a pleasant surprise. Come to help me choose my attire for the evening festivities? As you can see, I was just having a light snack."

  Aurelia's eyes darted from the desiccated husk on the floor to the Soul Sucking Straw in her father's hand. Her knuckles whitened around the crumpled parchment.

  "Don't you dare 'Father' me," she seethed, advancing into the room. Her armored boots crunched on the discarded, flamboyant tunic. "I've just come from the Eastern Quadrant. The reports are true, aren't they? The disappearances. The... cauldrons."

  The Emperor's smile didn't falter.

  "Oh, let's not worry about that right now," said the Emperor.

  Yet another door burst open. Another valet. She gasped in shock at the collapsed figure before her.

  "Emperor, Princess, I'm so sorry to interrupt," she said with fear. "But someone has crashed a dragon into the eastern wing of your fifth guest house and he's threatening to set fire to the ostrich feather curtains if you don't give him an audience."

  "WHAT?" said the Emperor. He was liable to kill this valet on the spot, too. Perhaps much more painfully. What the hell was she getting at? How was this allowed? He asked her all of these things, but she was scarcely able to answer.

  "Gods, he's too powerful! He made it past all the defense spells!" said the valet.

  "HOW?" said the Emperor. "I hired the best mages in all of the Western hemisphere!"

  "He's from the Eastern hemisphere," said the valet with a quiver and a pout. Her palms were getting sweaty. She didn't like how the Emperor was looking at her. "Keeps calling himself 'The Overlord.'"

  Suddenly, the Emperor's facial expression changed completely. And then, in an instant, he started to laugh. Quiet at first, and then louder and louder until it was echoing so loudly through the thronging palace closet that it almost made the valet's ears ring.

  Then, he stopped. The Emperor thought, 'Cast Substantiate Wine.'

  [Mana 98.9999%]

  A glass of merlot appeared in his left hand. He smiled and drank it heartily. It refilled immediately, so that it never seemed to run out no matter what he gulped down.

  [You are lightly buzzed]

  The Emperor chuckled again.

  "So, Zakaroth the Blade-Souled came to collect on his own bounty, did he?" said the Emperor with another chuckle. "I guess we'll see how that works out for him." He took another huge gulp of wine.

  [You are fairly intoxicated]

  Princess Aurelia's face contorted in confusion. "Zakaroth? Father, who is Zakaroth? What are you talking about?"

  The Emperor pictured the Wanted Poster still stashed in his inventory. He waved a dismissive hand. "An old name. A foolish name. A name belonging to a boy who thought he could rewrite the world with a stolen system and a bad attitude. Pay it no mind, my dear. This 'Overlord' is merely another mask hiding the same foolish face. He could never face a true player."

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  "So, that's it?" said Aurelia, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and despair. "You're not going to do anything about the missing people? You're just going to... what? Drink wine while some clown flies a dragon into our guest house?"

  "My dear Aurelia," the Emperor said, swirling the bottomless wine in its glass. "There is always a bigger clown. This 'Overlord' is simply a new flavor of chaos. And the disappearances? They are... an unfortunate necessity. A cost of progress. A tax on greatness."

  "A tax?" Aurelia shrieked, her composure finally shattering. "You're boiling people like soup stock! For what? So you can look better in a tunic you won't even wear?"

  "It's not about the tunic!" the Emperor roared, Ancestral Rage flaring in his eyes once more. He slammed the wine glass down on a velvet cushion, where it bounced, unspilled. "It's about potential! It's about taking the raw, worthless clay of common existence and shaping it into something worthy of an empire! That valet," he gestured with the Soul Sucking Straw, "was a bland, watery broth. But I? I am a feast. I am the sum of all parts, refined and elevated. I am becoming."

  Aurelia stared, horrified. There was no reasoning with him. "I've been talking to a man, you know. With one of the sending stones. He says he's a Prince. He says he knows how to stop you."

  This gave the Emperor pause. He took a slow, deliberate sip of wine. "A prince, you say? And what is this princeling's name?"

  "He wouldn't say," Aurelia said, her jaw set. "But he's powerful. And he's coming. He's bringing help."

  The Emperor threw back his head and laughed, a deep, booming sound that shook the tapestries on the walls. "Good! Let him come! The more the merrier! The cauldrons are vast, and my appetite is endless." He looked at the terrified valet who was still standing frozen by the door. "You. Go tell our... guest... that the Emperor will see him. In the throne room. But have him wait. I find it builds anticipation."

  ***

  The Overlord kicked a leg out of his way as he strode through the carnage of the throne room. The dragon had made quite a mess. Scorch marks blackened the ancient tapestries, and several royal guards looked like they'd been stepped on by a very heavy, very scaly foot.

  He loved walking through the chaos. The Emperor of Tuzandadia's taste in interior decorating left much for the Overlord to desire. After all, there was not one large, muscular sculpture of the Overlord flexing, nor was their a shadowbox of retired codpieces hanging on any of the walls that the Overlord could see, although he hoped if he kept checking he might eventually run into one. His own codpiece, his brilliant gilded dragon codpiece, was doing all the work as far as establishing his masculine prowess at the moment. And what prowess it was! The Emperor's seemed far too... clinical. Sterile. And everything was clean as a whistle, too. That was probably due to a passive buff, though, the Overlord thought.

  "Well, that's some fucked up shit, isn't it, Lugano?" said the Overlord, looking around at the destruction in the room. Most notably, ostrich curtains were dyed a harsh, bloody red from all the dead guards, their bodies burst like cherry tomatoes.

  A black and white speckled horse with prominent muscles, muscles that put the Overlord to shame in fact, as well as a magnificently long mane whinnied coolly in response.

  ['Lugano the Horse' doesn't like you]

  Classic. It almost made the Overlord want to sigh, but he wasn't a sighing kind of guy. No, he was a man fueled entirely by rage. Well, and steak. And bacon. And ale. Lots and lots of ale.

  ['Lugano the Horse' doesn't like you]

  Maybe one day, this horse would change its oat-filled mind. But apparently not today.

  "I think this whole idea is fucking idiotic, personally," said the voice of Stelas Stelford, one of the Overlord's many immortal supplicants. Due to his previous status as a utilitarian 'head of holding,' Stelas was presently but a severed head in a burlap sack tied to the side of Lugano's saddle. He had numerous items of Isabelle's in his inventory keeping him massively over-encumbered, including an entire bed. But that was old news, and the Overlord didn't want to dwell too much on the subject of Stelas' body, anyways. It'd gotten lost in some woods near Thres, and due to its encumbered nature had scarcely managed to move a pinky toe since being parted from Stelas' head. Which had taken about a month, at this point.

  "It wasn't my idea to crash the dragon through the window, you insolent, impotent curr! And now, the damned scaly beast is dead as shit!" said the Overlord. "If you couldn't handle the consequences of your blathering tongue, maybe you ought to have it cut out!"

  "You promised me you'd help me find the rest of my body if I helped you," said Stelas with a whine. "And this was clearly the right move."

  [Speech attempt: Deceive]

  "And I will. Eventually," said the Overlord, with no actual intention ever to do so.

  [Speech succeeded]

  "Thank the gods," said Stelas, genuine joy in his voice.

  The Overlord approached the grand throne at the far end of the hall. Something shiny had caught his eye.

  "First, we have to deal with the Emperor. Putting out a warrant for me, the godsdamned lunatic. And then, I'm going to take that big fucking gem. Hell, I'm gonna bust into all this asshole's guest houses and take ALL the gems. I mean, who the hell has a throne in each of their guest houses?"

  [You have discovered the 'Gem of Eternity']

  [Item analysis in progress... 1%...]

  [Item analysis in progress... 2%...]

  It was an enormous, shimmering jewel, about the size of a grown man's head, pulsating with a soft, ethereal light. It was floating just above the right armrest of the grand throne, held in place by some unseen force. The Overlord wanted it. He wanted it bad. He could already feel its power calling to him, a siren song of infinite potential. He took another step towards it.

  [Learn more about 'Gem of Eternity'?]

  [Y/N]

  The Overlord was absolutely dying to learn more about this fucking loot.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Zakaroth," said a voice from afar.

  The voice was smooth, cultured, and laced with an ancient power that made the very air in the throne room hum.

  "Ah, here's the chucklefuck himself!" said the Overlord. He spun around, 360 degrees, his Overlordly cape twirling and billowing brilliantly.

  [Stamina 99%]

  "Ah, what the fuck!" said the Overlord. "I didn't want to end up looking in the same direction I originally was!"

  "I guess you should've turned 180 degrees," said Stelas, his voice devoid of any emotion. He seemed to be somewhat dissociating. The Overlord had noticed this a lot lately, which was weird, considering Stelas had a usual penchant for devolving into soliloquy.

  "Damn it all to fucking hell, you're right!" said the Overlord. "The only problem, is that turning 180 degrees isn't dramatic enough! How will that give me enough movement for my cape to billow appropriately?"

  [Vigorous Rage activated]

  [Stamina 98%]

  The Overlord could feel his muscles doubling, no tripling in size as tendrils of purple electricity enveloped his body like ethereal veins.

  "But, your Overlord-ness, I thought that the cape you have equipped automatically billows all the time," said Stelas.

  "So what if it does? That doesn't mean it wouldn't billow MORE if I spun around with enough vigor. Why, this godsdamned thing ought to billow so much that... That... That the Emperor drops dead in shock!" said the Overlord.

  "Zakaroth, don't be silly," said the Emperor. He was right up behind the Overlord.

  "AAAAAAAGH!" said the Overlord as he spun 360 degrees once, twice, and finally three times! It was only then that he realized he'd accidentally spun 1080 degrees instead of 180 degrees, which had been his intention. So the Overlord finally spun 180 degrees, so that he'd spun a total of 1260 degrees to finally face the Emperor. The smug, smug Emperor.

  [Belligerent Rage activated]

  [Stamina 94%]

  The Overlord's muscles didn't get any bigger this time, but instead his cape got three times longer. However, the Overlord also became considerably shorter. Such shorter that he had to really crane his Overlordly neck to look the Emperor in the eyes. And if his face hadn't been obscured by his shrouded cowl, it would've been clear that the Overlord had gone brilliantly bald, too. And then, he started to shrink more, becoming smaller and smaller, to the point that he was the size of a small dog.

  [Miniature Rage activated]

  [Stamina 90%]

  "AAAAGH! THIS ISN'T WHAT I MEANT TO DO!" said the Overlord in a high-pitched squeaky little voice.

  The Emperor laughed again, his booming laughter shaking the very foundations of the palace.

  "My, my, Zakaroth. You haven't changed a bit," said the Emperor. "Still relying on that modded system of yours to make up for your own deficiencies. I must say, it's quite impressive. The sheer number of undocumented effects your 'Rage' abilities have is... chaotic. But chaos is predictable. And predictable chaos is just a poorly written formula."

  The Emperor took another sip from his bottomless glass of wine. "You're looking... diminished. Smaller than I remember. And balder. Did you lose your hair along with your dignity, or was that part of the bargain with whatever back-alley dev you traded your soul to for that system?"

  [Belligerent Rage deactivated]

  [Stamina 93%]

  The Overlord returned to normal size, which was, he had to admit, impressively muscular and intimidating. He was now a perfect 666 inches tall, a number which he found quite satisfying.

  "I traded my soul to no one, you motherfucker!" said the Overlord. "And I'm more powerful now than I've ever been! Why, my stats are so high that I'm practically a god! I'm not even sure why I'm here! It seems like a waste of my time to be talking to you! I should be off somewhere else! Somewhere more important!"

  "You should," the Emperor agreed with a nod. "But you're not. You're here, in one of my guest throne rooms, making a mess. Why? Because you're drawn to me, Zakaroth. Just like old times. You can't resist it. The pull of your past. The memory of what you once were. A weak little boy who stumbled upon a power he couldn't comprehend."

  "You don't know anything about me!" said the Overlord. "I've always been this way! I've always been a god! I've always been an Overlord! I was born this way! My mother was a goddess, and my father was a dragon! And I was raised by wolves!" The Overlord was a dark elf, so this was at minimum a tenuous claim.

  "Wolves with a surprisingly good grasp of system architecture," said the Emperor with a dry wit. "Look at you, Zakaroth. You're a parody. A walking, talking, screaming parody of power. You collect stats like a magpie collects shiny things, but you have no idea what to do with them. You rage and you loot and you kill, but for what? What is your purpose?"

  "My purpose is to be the best!" said the Overlord. "The strongest! The most feared! The most powerful! To have the biggest codpiece! And to have it be gilded! And now I'm here and I'm gonna take all your loot for sending out that wanted sign for me like a damned coward! I'll have your head! And your throne! And your gem!"

  "Then try," said the Emperor, gesturing lazily with the hand that held the wine glass. "Take them. Let's see what happens."

  The Overlord snarled. He was done talking. He was done listening to the Emperor's smug, condescending bullshit. He was going to end this.

  He started walking towards the throne, each step heavy with purpose. But with each step, he felt a strange resistance, like he was walking through water, then mud, then solid stone. His muscles strained, his stamina dropped.

  [Stamina 89%]

  "What's happening?" said the Overlord, grunting with effort. He was only ten feet from the throne, but it felt like a mile.

  "You never were good at understanding Illusion magic, Zakaroth," said the Emperor with a chuckle. He downed his wine glass, which immediately refilled. He downed it again, and then threw it on the marble floor before more wine could spawn. The glass shattered to bits. "There's no way in the seven hells you're getting any of my stuff without a fight." He cracked his neck with menace.

  "Fucking mages, you think you're all that," said the Overlord.

  ['Dreadful Longsword of Mana Destroying and Serious Bloodletting' equipped]

  [+690 str]

  The Overlord's muscles grew larger, pulsing with power.

  [+420 const]

  His legs were near tree trunks, and his battle stance was robust and threatening.

  [+333 dx]

  And the Overlord held the blade with such confidence it may as well have been part of his arm.

  "Let's see how fucking all that you are now, old man," said the Overlord with a smirk as he raised his crooked blade and pointed at the foe.

  "Certainly," said the Emperor. He raised both his well-manicured hands. The ground rumbled as fifty huge, grasping claws raised up from the floor. They all reached for the Overlord. "Let us see, indeed."