Chapter 1: The Fourth Overlord (1)

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.